EARTH AND 
NEW EARTH 



Cale Young Rice 




Class. 

Book 

GopyrigM 






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EARTH AND NEW EARTH 



EARTH AND 
NEW EARTH 



BY 

CALE YOUNG RICE 

AUTHOR OF "PORZIA," "AT THE WORLD'S HEART," "FAR 

QUESTS," "YOLANDA OF CYPRUS," "COLLECTED 

PLAYS AND POEMS," etc. 




Garden City New York 

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 

MCMXVI 



T^V 



V># 



All rights reserved, including that t 

translation into foreign languages, 

including the Scandinavian 

Copyright, 1916, by 
Cale Young Rice 



«*><>' 



JAN 19I9IU 

©CLA420400 

1*o /, 



To 
PRESIDENT WOODROW WILSON 

WHOSE WISDOM AND PATIENCE HAVE 
SO NOBLY SERVED THE IDEALS OF 
HUMANITY AND WORLD-CITIZENSHIP 






V* 



k 



/l // WgA/s reserved, including that of 

translation into foreign languages, 

including the Scamlinavian 

Copyright, 1916, by 
Cale Young Rice 



*xi 



JAN 19191b 
©CLA420400 

fa /, 



To 
PRESIDENT WOODROW WILSON 

WHOSE WISDOM AND PATIENCE HAVE 
SO NOBLY SERVED THE IDEALS OF 
HUMANITY AND WORLD-CITIZENSHIP 



PREFACE 

The first poem in this volume is permitted 
to stand as it appeared in the Century Magazine 
soon after the outbreak of the War. The second 
but re-expresses such sympathies as must pave 
the way to any prospect of world-citizenship. 
The third, a drama in one act, has Militarism — 
here " early " Prussian — as its abhorrence. 

Other poems touching on the War have been 
placed elsewhere in the volume — which needs no 
further comment, unless I may express a hope 
that English poetry, so often hospitable to alien 
verse-forms, may also adopt that of the Japanese 
hokkai — the spirit and method of which I have 
sought to reveal, in examples of my own, under 
" Poetic Epigrams." For the art value of the 
hokkai — its antagonism to the obvious — is a quality 
which all true literature must increasing seek. 

Cale Young Rice. 
Louisville, Ky., Dec, 191 5. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Preface vii 

Princip 3 

Earth and New Earth 8 

Gerhard of Ryle 15 

The Shore's Song to the Sea 37 - 

The Runaway 37 ~ 

The Version of Simon the Sadducee 43 - 

The Faun Repents 49 

In the Deep Mddnight 52 

Church Bells Heard in the Country 57 

Songs to A. H. R.: 

1. Shelter 61 ' 

2. Dominions 62 ' 

3. Assuagement 63 

4. Secresies 64 ' 

5. On the Beach 65 

6. At the Ebb-hour 66 

7. The Edge of the Hill 67 

8. All 68^ 

King Solomon Sings of Women 69 

The Immortal 74 

Vita Mlrabilis 75 

As the Tide Comes in 78 

ix 



x CONTEXTS 

PAGE 

The Inquest 80 

Poetic Epigrams (After the fashion of the Japanese.) 

1. The First Rats 82 

2. Mists 82 

3. Seed-baixs 83 

4. Li a Cemetery at Night 83 

5. Kindred 83 

6. The Lightning 84 

7. Faith 84 

8. The Autumn Moon 84 

9. Drippings 85 

10. The Marble Christ 85 

11. Script 85 

12. At Night 86 

13. November Leaves 86 

14. The Crows 86 

15. By One Just Dead 87 

16. The Frost 87 

17. Lost 87 

Winds of War: 

1. To the Masters op Europe 88 

2. Ln the Toils 91 

3. The Dead 93 

4. The Prayers op the Warring Nations 95 — 

5. God or Chaos 99— 

Father Meran 105— 

The New Patriot 107 

The Song op the Homesick Gael 108 

A Devon Ride no 

A Sidmouth Lad in 

Widowed 112 

The Larger Loss "3 

Re-reckoning "4 

Last Ltnes op the Poet op Suma "7 



CONTENTS xi 

PAGE 

Origins 119 

The Bride of Oita 120 

The Immanent God 121 

Ocean of Night 126 

Hongkong City at Night 127 

A Wife 129 

Beacons 131 

The Living Buddha 132 

From a Northern Beach 135 

Trees and Gr\ss 138 

Zebi 140 

During a Long Calm 142 

Evening Waters 144 

In a Park Pavilion 145 

The Fishlng 148 

Abeyance 149 

Old Age and Autumn 150 

A Lover, Rejected 152 

A Litany for Latter-day Mystics 153 

God, to Men 155 

Ultlmates 157 

Arms 158 •> 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 



PRINCIP 

{The assassin of the Archduke Ferdinand) 

Look at him there, a lad of nineteen years, 
Slipping along the street with Slavic tread: 
A moment, and from out his pistol's mouth 
Shall leap the spark to set a world in flames. 
For with the red death of a royal duke 
The infinite tangle of a continent 
Of immemorially warring peoples 
Is kindled, and thro millions of calm breasts 
The old race hatred runs. Austria reft, 
Knowing the shot was at her feudal heart, 
Flashes from out her molten indignation 
A word that wakes the wild Caucasian urgence 
Of Slavdom, ever swelling toward the West. 
And Evolution's endless tragedies — 
The friction fostered by uncounted kings, 
The ancient war-cries that ring still in the blood 
3 



4 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 

With timeless memories of rape and slaughter, 

Inheritances, bred deep in the bone, 

Of battling tongues and creeds and cruelties, 

Of ruined homes, wrecked loves, and razed delights, 

These and a thousand scorns and dark contempts 

And hatreds, heirlooms of long ignorance, 

Flare up into one frenzied thirst for war! 

Princip, Princip, lad of the nineteen years, 

Was it the finger of God that pulled your trigger 

And loosed the avalanches of destruction 

With a blind bullet of predestination? 

Was it of God, who found His upward way 

To some world-aim thwarted by all the mesh 

And fever of impenetrable passions? 

A hundred times within one haunted week 

The scales of Destiny hung even: 

Who weighed them down to War? was it our God? 

Who spoke into the Teuton veins a faith 

That the inexorable hour had rung 

To face the Russian horror, and, at last, 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 5 

By letting their own blood, relieve their hearts 
Of the long warward strain that pride and fear 
And pent world-hunger kept so peril-taut? 
Who used the living enmity of France, 
Bidding her stretch an oath of dark allegiance 
Across Germanic borders to the Slav, 
And plight a fearful or revengeful troth 
To the wild Muscovite, in whose vast breast 
A consciousness, perchance, of low estate 
Is the dim whip that drives him west to freedom? 
And England, with her greed, for good or ill 
Girdled about the globe, and with her pride 
And dominance of empire thundering 
From ships on every sea, who flung her heart, 
A-quest for peace, yet with a secret sense 
That now her dreaded foe might be struck down — 
Who flung her heart upon the bloody fields? 
Princip, with nineteen years, can you not tell? 

Is God in this? or was His Immanence 
Overwhelmed by atavistic Nature's surge 



6 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 

Up from the core of earth? Are East and West, 

From Asia to young Yukon, swept by winds 

Of war into this crucible of time, 

To emerge after long fumes of pain and horror 

More nearly fused to one humanity? 

Or has void Chance, on which was builded up 

The babel of our boasted civilization, 

Betrayed us as we grasped toward the stars? 

Can He, the Alchemist of the Universe, 

Pour blood and burning tears and misery 

And waste and famine out upon the earth, 

Yet in a year, or in a yoke of years, 

Transmute them into human betterment? 

Or does intemperable fatality 

Strain now the heart-strings of a continent 

To breaking, and its mind to mad unfaith? 

Princip, God's tool or Hell's, can you not tell? 

"Autocracies shall go and Armaments 

And that peace-murdering trade, Diplomacy!" 

Such the cry is, Princip. And shall your blow, 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 7 

Your petty, obsessed, patriotistic blow, 
The last of the innumerable that ages 
Have struck against the ancient iron gates 
Of Tyranny — shall yours avail at last? 
Or shall steel yet intrench the happiness 
Of nations, not far mightier common-weal? 
And since men seize at last, with wan clairvoyance, 
The vision of a World-State shaping dim 
Upon the horizon of their misery, 
Is it mirage, desert delusion, dream, 
Born not of possibility but pain? 
Or does in truth the misty dome arise, 
Already shadowed forth by their desire, 
Of a World-Parliament's protecting peace, 
And in it the one universal right 
Of HUMAN WELFARE graven high, to guide 
Their vast deliberations — and to link 
At last with brave and noble assent to Law 
The nations bruted now by bloody Might? 
Princip, with nineteen years, can you not tell? 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 

Before the winds of War awoke 

And broke with raving strife 
Over a world that lay at rest 

Under a calm peace-life, 
I sat beside a shimmering sea 

Whose tides around me rang, 
And, gloriously, to Memory, 

My fair soul-mistress sang: 

So much of the earth I have loved, dear God, so much of 

the wondrous earth, 
That when I lie beneath its sod I shall not feel a dearth 
Of beauty there, or of joy there, of marvellous delights, 
Since I shall bring unto its breast a million rapture 

sights. 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 9 

For I have gathered its glories up, from my own low 

hearth-side 
To where Himalayas, high above belief, to heaven ride. 
There's not a sea but has lent to me sunset, moonrise, or 

dawn, 
And oh, the cities of men that thro my ardent eyes have 

gone. 

The cities of men I— fair Honolulu, by her irised reefs, 
Where younger West meets older East in dimly blent 

beliefs, 
Till each can read, with a strange heed, the vaster 

mysteries, 
That out of human hopes have sprung, o'er continents 

and seas. 

Or Yokohama, with Fuji to the southward, like a throne 
Some Buddha has deserted for a shrine less high and lone, 
And where a folk, long under the yoke of isolation's 

dream, 
Rise up and scatter the centuries, at a new vision's 

gleam. 



io EARTH AND NEW EARTH 

Or, thro pagoda-towering gates of secret vague Pekin, 
.":;• SUM old China drifting out, neve China surging :>:. 
Stern men of state I have watched await at a Republic's 

womb 
To learn if Freedom yet may forth be brought, to lift 

their doom. 

Then India, it: her mystic trance of deities so strange 
And immemorial, I have seen half-tremble, as if change 
Almost had come, like a dim drum that beat across her 

sea 
Of resignation to this life's sad unreality. 

Oh, running flame of a new desire! Beside the pyramids 
I have beheld it sweep the eyes of men who lift their lids 
To Mecca or to Jerusalem, or to no shrine beyond 
That of a hope Some Help will bind all hearts with a 
sure bond. 

Thro Europe I have beheld it run, a little lonely flame 
Of brotherhood — or wild unrest, with many an anarch 
name. 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH n 

'' Let us be one, life's every son, not lord" — it said — 

"nor slave ; 
But men with an equal share in earth, our mother, 

which God gave I" 

"Let us be one /" And ever the land I love above all 

lands 
Has swiftly heard the immortal word, and reached her 

bounteous hands 
To every man, tho, with a ban, from shores accurst he 

came, 
And on his brow has stamped anew humanity's great 

name. 

So much of earth I have loved, dear God, so much of the 

valiant sphere 
That bears us to our destiny, on wings we cannot hear, 
So much of earth and the radiant birth upon it of new 

dreams, 
That sometimes as the living heart within Your Breast 

it seems. 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 

Thus did I sing, with winds a-ring 

Around me. Then there came 
Wild-footed War, running amuck 

With madness none could tame, 
Among the nations that so long 

Had sought for brotherhood, 
And that now in their frenzy saw 

No safety save in blood. 

Then sudden the spirit of all love 

Was lost, all hope went down; 
Within a wild red flood of hate 

I saw the world's soul drown. 
And, in the frothing element, 

There swam, instead, the beast 
Man was and is and shall be till 

He takes Law for his priest. 

All in a madness was it done ! 

And memory — there slain — 
Within me rotted like a corpse 

That in the sun has lain. 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 13 

Till where beauty had been there swarmed 

The maggot of despair, 
Sending its stench of uselessness 

Into my soul's sick air. 

But only a little while 'twas so, 

For faith — I know not why — 
Faith — tho enfouled by crimes of fate — 

Comes back into the sky. 
Yes, comes again, and did — to heal 

With its immortal wind 
This darkest wrong that man has borne, 

Or deed that he has sinned. 

And so I sing again, dear God: So much of the 

wondrous earth 
I've loved that when I lie in it I shall not feel a dearth 
Of beauty there, or of joy there, of marvellous delights, 
Or of Thy deep divine desire to set all grief to rights. 



GERHARD OF RYLE 



Saint Francis, Saint Lutgarde, 

And sweet Saint Margaret, 
Saint Gertrude, and Ludwine, 

And gentle Saint Colette, 
They never shed the heart-blood 

Of bird, man, or beast; 
And a warrior, tho great on earth, 

In heaven shall be least. 



CHARACTERS 

Conrad . . . Militant Archbishop of Cologne 
Gerhard of Ryle . Architect of the great Cathedral 

Gerda His wife 

Ursula A girl, their servant 

Rupert . . . A Knight in Conrad's Council 
Soldiers of Conrad 



GERHARD OF RYLE 

Time.— Circa 1295 A. D. 

Scene. — The chief room in the house of Gerhard, 
•with a door and windows opening directly on the 
place of the unfinished Cathedral. Its walls and 
ceiling are of plaster and of stained oaken beams, 
which are grotesquely carved about a massive smoul- 
dering fireplace, right. 

On a tall rest to the left and back is a drawing of 
the Church's sublime facade: before which is a table 
with architectural implements together with an old 
sword. Chairs and chests also are visible; and 
right or left, doors leading to the kitchen and to the 
bed-chambers. Through the windows a portion of the 
Cathedral's lofty choir stands magical in the moon- 
light. 



20 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 

Gerhard, in dishevelled dress, is yearningly ab- 
sorbed in his drawings by the rest. Gerda sits to 
the front centre, a book fallen from her, and with sup- 
pressed hatred of her surroundings written on her 
face. Ursula enters, as if habitually, and goes 
down to her. 

Ursula. I have set wine and herrings on the table 
That he may eat — the master — when he will. 
The candles, too, are ready and the bread 
And water against the morning. — Is there more? 
Gerda (rising). There is no more. 

[Ursula goes. 
But ever is it thus! 
Up with the dawn 
For this housewifery 
Of ordering a wan wench to and fro, 
And then of bidding her to bed, where she 
May still dream of her kettles and her kitchen, 
Of broth and stew and pottage, in her sleep. 

[Gerhard turns, she continues. 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 21 

A woman is a hare shut in a warren, 
A linnet in a cage— when she is wed so. 

[He rises. 
Night after night this dull and heavy house 
In which you toil and I sit tortured by. 

Gerhard (comes down). But Gerda 

Gerda. In a nunnery 

were better. 
Your tools scrape ever there upon the paper 
From dusk to midnight, 
And from dawn to dusk 
You are away amid unwitted workmen 
Gazing with love on every stone they lay. 
But I bide here — bide — 
In want, aye in want, tho nobly born, 
Of the one thing— the merest that befits me. 
Gerhard (gently). Yet well do you know why. 
It is because 
You ask me, Gerda, what I cannot give. 

Gerda. And what, in giving not, are less a man. 

[He flushes. 



22 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 

Yes, less than are these larded monks about us, 

Who dare take arms, tho sworn to crucifixes. 

[He controls himself and goes silently back to 
work. A pause. 

Gerda. Well, some there are who 

Gerhard. Yes, many who find 

In bloody battles all their heart's desire. 

Gerda. And what but battles saves our Father- 
land? 
Gerhard. Peace, Gerda, might. 
Gerda. And weaklings without swords? 

[When he does not answer. 
Am I to live . . . so . . . when there are 

those 
With whom might be an end of low-born dull- 
ness? 

[He only sighs. 
Would Rupert leave me to this weariness — 
Rupert I might have wedded save for you? 
Am I a burgher's daughter, chosen but 
To spin the flax 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 23 

And potter mid the pails, 
That I am dealt with thus? 

Gerhard {simply). You are my wife. 

Gerda. The wife of master Gerhard, builder, of 
Ryle! 
Who left a castle and her father's care, 
A banquet-board 
Where in the evening glow 
The minnesingers sang contending of love, 
To wed a paltry dreamer! and who soon 
No doubt will come contently to beguile 
Her days — while he is wrapped away or lost 
In his cathedral longings; aye, or gone 
With mall and measure to the quarry-fields— 
In driving geese to market ! 

Gerhard {rising again). Can you speak so? 

[Coming down and pleading tenderly. 
I ask not anything of you at all — 
Save that you be to me, 
As first you seemed, 
The sainted inspiration of my soul, 



24 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 

That seeks now to eternalize in stone, 

In arches that shall spring like seraph-pinions 

And spires piercing to sunward, as a song, 

This church — a very mitre of Christ on earth! 

I am not born of barons, like your father, 

Or of a race 

Of prelates like this bloody 

And proud Archbishop who commands my 

toil. 
Why to your scutcheoned gates I one day came 
I know not — I ennobled but by dreams. 
And what led you to abjure the difference 
Between our births and love me is yet darker; 
While darkest is it what drew you to follow 
My steps to this humility and loss. 
But it is done, Gerda, and we are wed, 
And if your love now finds 
No valour-heights in the great shrine I build 
To hold the bones of the Three Holy Kings 
Drawn starrily to Christ in Bethlehem, 
One thing abides — the love I gave you then. 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 25 

Gerda. In name, but not in truth and life and 
passion. 

Gerhard. Because you will it so. 

Gerda {implacably). Because the serf 
Who is my husband shuns to take the sword 
Of knighthood which my father would gird on him 
And turn from doltish tools. 

Gerhard. To daily murder? 

And plunder, like these lords who ply the Rhine? 

[/Is she turns on him. 
No, no, I mean it not — of him, your father. 

[More impassionedly. 
But I am not as they! and what I here 
Am building is a greater thing to God, 
Wherein all that I am must be transfused 
Without blood-guilt 
Or any sinfulness. 
And you can aid this immortality, 
This shrine soaring to touch infinitude — 
And thro whose doors, with saints and martyrs set, 
The millions of this German land shall move, 



20 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 

Fast jewelled windows where fair Paradise 
Shall be set forth in colours spread supernal, 
To mass and vespers which shall purge their sin. 
You. Gerda. you so beautiful, can aid. 

Gerda. Yes. as may any stone with which you 
build: 
A sacrifice 

Set in a selfish vision. 

But I will not. My own way will I choose, 
And it shall be — away from here. 

Gerhard ( '•'.?)• Away? 

Gerda {seeing him torn at last). 
With one who knows the sword's nobility. 
And who will build me love, not stony churches; 
One knowing a woman is flesh as well as spirit, 
And that beauty is earth's as well as heaven's. 

Gerhard. And he . . . that you will go 
with . . . will be Rupert? 

Gerda. He will be one at least who is aware 
How vainly I am made ... a mere midwife 
[With a final thrust. 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 27 

Unto a vision that is moon-begotten, 
A fancy that but bats and owls shall finish — 
And keep to worship in. 
Gerhard {soul- struck). By which . . . you 
mean . . . 
That to my shrine 
Some evil-veering wind 
Has risen . . . which, hearing, you have kept 

from me? 
Some breath, perchance, 
Of Rupert's poison tongue? 
Rupert, who would strike God out of this land? 

[A knock without. 
Gerda. Your answer stands there waiting at 
the door. 
[Goes rigidly off as he moves to draw the latch. 
But a knock of more violence comes, and, 
shuddering back, he takes up the sword as if 
fearing treachery. Then quickly opening the 
door he finds Conrad — with several cloaked 
forms that slip back into the shadow. 



28 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 

Conrad (with amazed irony on seeing Gerhard's 
sword). 
By every nail of the Cross, what mood is this? 

[Enters. 
My holy builder bent on shedding blood 
Like any baron of us? My believer 
In peace without a sword set upon murder? 
His tender tools forsook, and traceries? 

[Laughs. 
It is not ill, not ill! . . . no; as I live! 
Who has two trades need never lack employ- 
ment. 

[Comes down. 
And, sanctus, I am minded ! ... It will lighten 
The purpose I have brought. 

Gerhard (forebodingly). Christ save my soul. 

[Drops the sword with an abhorrence that causes 
Conrad to flush. 
Conrad (whom a pause is not able to restrain). 
I do not like aversions, Master Gerhard. 
Within this land I am priest-militant: 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 29 

Is my sword-bearing, too, an infamy? 

[Finding vantage in this. 
So is it with these peace-fed artisans. 
It sickens me; 
Till, to the guts, I weary 
Of this unslaked church-building. 
For . . . wherefore 
Should I, but for a dead man in his coffin, 
Tho he was called my father 
And laid on me 

The pledge to build this fane up to the stars, 
Spend all the guilders this arch-diocese 
Can gather — I, engirt by fools and foes? 
Rupert is right! 

Gerhard (trembling). Rupert? 

Conrad. I will cease. 

And if the Kings who rode to Bethlehem 
Want for their bones a shrine, then let them send 
To my electorate peace, 
Or to my coffers 
Mammon enough to quell my enemies. 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
Gerhard (whom a deadly pallor has stricken still). 
You have come here to say the mighty fane 
Which I am toiling for and which is vet 

Not half to heaven 

Conrad. Must, by heaven, stay so; 

[Prepares to go. 
Tho to the land a Devil's Easter come. 

J: '-.j 'j And it is Rupert who persuades you 
to it. 

So there may be more money to shed blood? 

Too deep were such a shame. 

Conrad (ajlare). Master Gerhard! 

Gerhard. Master am I of naught, save of my 
h:_re. 
High over me is your authority 
And over all the thousands of this land. 

[With solemn faith. 

But this, if you should do 

Conrad {in uratii). Dragons of Hell! 

Am I to drink fool's breath? Is this a Pope 
Of very Rome to question my decrees! 



EARTH AND XEW EARTH 31 

Gerhard. Xo, but, my lord, I am the living voice 

Of those unfinished arches that arise 

Out of my •window, 

Under the pale moon, 

To point toward eternity and light. 

And even you 

Who have compelled this city 

And all the land about beneath your yoke, 

Will dare not do this. 
Conrad. Dare! . . . dare! . . . not 

dare! 

[Chokes. 

This from a tool-bred hireling! . . . Soul of God! 

Gerhard. It is God's soul, that cries into your ears, 

[With profound faith. 

And will not hush for mitre or for crown 

Until it tells you 

Who have ground the poor 

And gathered widows' mites to waste on war — 

Heavily on the people hanging chains 

Which strangle past enduring — that if now 



32 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 

Conrad (ragingly). May I go down to Hell and 
there be set 
The task of flaming damnefcl souls with lust — 
As one has flamed your wife, upstarting peasant — 

[Gerhard cries out. 
If you vent more of this. (Calls.) Rupert! In! 
[As the door opens, to Rupert, entering. 
This knave has spoken words of spotted treasor. ! 
Of treason! And his blood — if in so pale 
A thing blood be — shall cool in prison for it. 

[With worse thoughts, as Gerda enters. 
Or no ! The worm, the wan church-chaffing coward, 
Shall see scorn of him even from his wife. 
To — to her! Take her in your avid arms, 
Unto your breast! With all the power I am 
I give her you, and shrive the adultery. 
Rupert. (Starts toward her). Gerda! 
Gerhard. Oh! What am I driven to! 

Rupert (who pauses, laughing, as Gerda stands 
motionless.) 
To seeing now what love and passion are! 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 33 

Appeaseless passion — 
Not for a carven saint, 
Or for a painted angel without lips 
And limbs and breasts where happy kisses hive, 
But for a woman full of sweet response. 

[Again starts toward her. 
Gerhard (uncontrollably). Not Christ upon the 
very Cross bore this. 

[He springs wildly at Rupert and seizes his 
dagger. A struggle, a fall, a stab ensue; then 
silence. Then slowly he rises with horror and 
staggers back, till his hand striking the church- 
plan tears it across.] 
Conrad (who runs to the door, now with redoubled 
wrath). 
In, in! Ho, in! Murder! murder! 

Enter Soldiers alarmed. 

Murder! 
A Soldier (dazed). My lord, who? (Looks 
around.) How? Sir Rupert dead? Here? 



34 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 

Conrad. Take him, I tell you. 
Soldier {confused). Who, my lord? and 

where? 
Conrad. The murderer there of Ryle. 
Soldier {amazed). Gerhard of Ryle? 

[Gerhard stands staring at his deed. 
Conrad. He who will shed no blood! who will 
not fight 
In battles, but who dips his soul in murder! 

[The soldiers prepare fetters. 
Gerhard {stricken, aghast, with his eyes still fixed 
on Rupert). 
The curse of Cain! the crimson curse of Cain! 
In spite of all — at last! Its guilt upon 

The glory I was dreaming . . . O upon 

[Sees the torn plan. 

My shrine {Moans.) 

Soldier. What shall be done with him, my 

lord? 
Gerhard. Each stone that I should lift would 
now cry out 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 35 

And every column crumble with wet blood. 

[Bewildered. 
Yet I was set apart from violence 
By such a vision as no man e'er had. 

[Again, after moans, with the weariness of one 
lost. 
Accursed be my hand and shrivelled up, 
Accursed all the weapons of the world 
And all the hate 
Whose cruelty has shaped 
The guilty tools of rage and lust and ruin 
That from the gates of Eden to this hour 
Have smitten humankind with grief and death. . . . 
And oh, accursed be, lord of Cologne, 
You, in whose desecrated heart the Dove 
Of the Holy Spirit 
Ne 'er has beat its wings. 

[They fetter him. 
Do with me now according to your will. 
Conrad (in whose stark face the soldiers seek 
orders). 



36 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 

Bear him up to a scaffold of his church 

And let him — happen over. If he lives 

The Devil's in him. If he dies it shall 

Be held the Devil's doing — and not mine. 

I do not think his tainted task will now 

Be hurried to a feverous finishment. 

[They lead Gerhard out, Gerda still standing 
motionless. Conrad with a glance of in- 
difference at her follows. Then a shudder 
passes over Gerda, whose eyes are on the door; 
and as one against her will she slowly moves 
toward it. When there she trembles, listens, 
and then, looking up, falls back, stricken, from 
the sight, with a cry of horror. At the same 
time Ursula enters but stops frozen. 

CURTAIN 



THE SHORE'S SONG TO THE SEA 

Out on the rocks primeval, 

The grey Maine rocks that slant and break to the 

sea, 
With the bay and juniper round them, 
And the leagues on leagues before them, 
And the terns and gulls wheeling and. crying, wheel- 
ing and crying over, 
I sat heart-still and listened. 

And first I could only hear the wind in my ears, 
And the foam trying to fill the high rock-shallows. 
And then, over the wind, over the whitely blossom- 
ing foam, 
Low, low, like a lover's song beginning, 
I heard the nuptial pleading of the old shore, 
A pleading ever occultly growing louder: 
37 



38 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 

sea, glad bride of me 1 
Bom of the bright ether and given to wed me, 
Given to glance, ever, for me, and gleam and dance in 

the sun, 
Come to my arms, come to my reaching arms, 
That seem so still and unavailing to take you, and hold 

you, 
Yet never forget, 
Never by day or night, 
The hymeneal delights of your embracings. 

Come, for the moon, my rival, shall not have you; 
No, for tho twice daily afar he beckons and you go, 
You, my bride, a little way back to meet him, 
As if he once had been your lover, he, too, and again 

enspelled you, 
Soon, soon, I know it is only feigning ! 
For turning, playfully turning, tidally turning, 
You rushfoamingly, swiftly back to my arms I 

And so would I have you rush; so rush now ! 

Come from the sands where you have stayed o'erlong, 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 39 

Come from the reefs where you have wandered silent, 
For ebbings are good, the restful ebbings of love, 
But, oh, the bridal flowings of it are better ! 
And now I would have you loose again my tresses, 
My locks rough and weedy, rough and brown and 

brinily tangled, 
But, oh, again as a bridegroom's, when your tide, 

whispering in, 
Lifts them up, pulsingly up with kisses I 

Come with your veil thrown back, breaking to spray I 

And oh, with plangent passion I 

Come with your naked sweetness, salt and wholesome, to 
my bosom, 

Let not a cave or crevice of me miss you, or cranny, 

For, oh, the nuptial joy you float into me, 

The cooling ambient clasp of you, I have waited over- 
long, 

And I need to know again its marriage meaning ! 

For I think it is not alone to bring forth life, that I mate 
you; 



4 o EARTH AND NEW EARTH 

More than life is the beauty of life with love I 
Plentiful are the children tltat you bear to me, the 

blossoms, 
The fruits and all the creatures at your breast dewtty 

fed, 
But mating is troubled with a far higher meaning— 
A hint of a consummation for all things. 
Come utterly tfien, 
Utterly to me come, 
And let us surge together, clasped close, in infinite 

union, 
Until we reach a transcendence of all birth, and all 

dying, 
A n ecstasy holding the universe blended — 
Such ecstasy as is its ultimate Aim ! 

So sang the shore, the long bay-scented shore, 
Broken by many an isle, many an inlet bird-em- 
bosomed, 
And the sea gave answer, bridally, tidally turning, 
And leapt, radiant, into his rocky arms! 



THE RUNAWAY 

What are you doing, little day-moon, 

Over the April hill? 
What are you doing, up so soon, 
Climbing the sky with silver shoon? 
What are you doing at half-past noon, 

Slipping along so still? 

Are you so eager, the heights unwon, 

That you cannot wait, 
But, unheeding of wind and sun, 
Out of your nest of night must run, 
Up where the day is far from done, 

Shy little shadow-mate? 
41 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
Up and away then — with young mists 

Tripping, along the blue! 
Dance and dally and promise trysts 
Unto each that around you lists; 
For, little moon, not a one but wists 

April's the time to woo! 



THE VERSION OF SIMON THE SADDUCEE 

Scribes and priests, hearken to me, 

Simon am I, the Sadducee, 

And, in spite of what I tell 

Of a dead man made whole and well, 

I say there is neither Heaven nor Hell. 

Thus did it chance — and only so. 
I was coming from Jericho, 
And, when anear to Bethany, 
Had crept under an olive tree, 
Wear\- of heat and the Dead Sea. 

And as I rested, nigh asleep, 

I heard a sudden moan sweep, 

And looking out from the olive-gloom 

Bespread over a near hill tomb, 

I saw a surging throng loom. 

43 



44 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 

And out of the throng I heard a cry, 
"Master, why did you let him die!" 
From a lone woman's grief it came — 
One of two that called his name — 
And seemed to smite his heart as flame. 

For tears were started in his breast, 
Like waters from a fountain prest. 
And lo, come to the tomb, he said, 
In words that with sore yearning bled, 
" Roll the stone away from the dead." 

And swift they rolled its weight away, 
As you have heard his people say. 
And then he cried — I swear, thus — 
In a voice flung as wind thro us, 
"I bid you to come forth, Lazarus." 

And slowly out of the grave there came, 
Bound about — like one who's lame — 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 45 

With clothes at the feet, and face, too, 
This Lazarus — a mere Jew — 
Who had been dead. . . . whole days thro ! 

And as he came a great awe fell — 
Seeming to fold the earth as well. 
Yet if the hill shook, I know not: 
Tho such a strength, there begot, 
Nigh left me as the wife of Lot. 

But soon the throng cried out, "He lives!" 
At which a little shiver he gives — 
Then falls down at the Master's feet. 
And the women running, glad and fleet, 
Took from him the winding-sheet. 

Then was rejoicing, far and near, 
And thronging about, his tale to hear. 
Yet, by the rod of Moses, all 
Of moment still was to befall ! 
For he but stood there in his pall. 



46 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 

Till some at last cried, "Master, bid 
Him tell us what in death he did. 
For we would know of the Abyss — 
Of Sheol coming after this — 
Whether it be a pain or bliss! " 

And the throng pressed closer, closer still, 
When Lazarus shook, as if his will 
Had scarcely yet from death come back. 
And then he stood there, all a-lack, 
Looking as one upon the rack. 

But still the throng cried, "Bid him speak!' 
Till He who raised the dead grew weak, 
And a sweat broke out upon his brow — 
A sweat of faltering, all allow, 
Whether to bid the dead avow. 

Yet, louder still, "Yea, let us know 
What Heaven is, if there we go; 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 47 

For we will believe what man hath seen." 
They cried again: and he, grown lean, 
Turned at last with a granting mien. 

But then did Lazarus loose his lips, 
As one whom a great loving grips, 
And said, "Nay, Lord, send them away; 
To you alone will I first say 
What I have seen of Heaven this day." 

So He unto them said, "Stand off: 
Have I not shewn ye signs enough? " 
And they obeyed, tho lothfully, 
Murmuring backward from the tree, 
Where those two stood alone with me. 

Then was it that this Healer said, 
"Speak!" and hope to his word was wed; 
Such hope as never hung before 
At the tomb's unrevealing door. 
The very sun stood eager o'er. 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
And Lazarus stammered forth, "Dear Lord, 
Shall I so pierce you with a sword? 
In the four days of my death-gloom 
I have but lain as in a womb: 
Emptiness only has the tomb ! " 

And he, their "Lord" and "Master" called, 
Paled to his heart, as if appalled. 
But only a space, then beauty spread, 
Strange as the power that raised the dead, 
Over his limbs and lit his head. 

And then He gently turned away 
And to the throng I heard him say, 
"Look on my face and search ye out 
Whether of Heaven ye should doubt!" 
And all cried "Nay, Lord," with a shout. 

So I, Simon, the Sadducee, 
Say still that Heaven nor Hell may be. 
And yet if thus the dead arise 
Who is there in his heart denies 
That in this man a Prophet cries? 



THE FAUN REPENTS 

Spring seized me in the wood, 

Made of me a satyr: 
Feet hoofed with hardihood, 

Heart a passion-crater. 
Spring seized me in the wood — 

Oh, how I hate her! 
For the nymph I love came by, 
With a green wreath at her thigh. 
"Were she Dian's self," said I, 

"Now would I mate her!" 

So, lustily, I sprang 

Thro the leaves and took her; 
Swept her with kisses, sang, 

No least word would brook her. 
49 



SO EARTH AND NEW EARTH 

And, when, within the shade, 

All but bliss forsook her, 
Up with a remorseful cry, 
Up she rose, with wreathen thigh, 
Anger-pale, and fled: then I 
Knew I had mistook her. 

Now, loveless, do I go, 

Loveless— and unmated. 
Shamed by all nymphs I know, 

By her shunned and hated. 
Dance they amid the brake? 

My arms go unsated! 
Never sylvan-girded thigh 

Swift against me glimmers by. 
Evoe ! how sad am I, 

So befooled and fated ! 

Spring, Spring it was did this, 
Spring the mad exalter! 

Spring, with her wanton kiss, 
Fire on the heart's altar. 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 51 

Had I my nymph again 

I would never palter 
With such passion: no, not I, 
Tho with wanting I should die ! 
But, sufficed, would let no sigh 

For her from me falter. 



IN THE DEEP MIDNIGHT 



Clanging, ever clanging: 

Clanging in the deep midnight, train-bells clanging! 

Over the city sleeping, 

Over the silent huddle of roofs and shadows, 

Over the hearts of thousands, lying enchambered, 

breathing evenly, 
Or breathing and tossing, to and fro, on torn seas of 

insomnia, 
Clanging over the streets, restless clanging — 
Over husht streets, with blue electric lights lone- 

somely burning, 
Over the steepled churches, 
The shrines dark and empty save for the voiceless 

souls of Bibles, 

52 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 53 

Over the wan Hospital, the wards where the sick lie 

waking a little, 
And where they moan a little, not knowing why, 
Over the Jail where the guilty, too, wake and stir in 

their ward, 
And where they start, with waging blood, and moan 

and beat at their bars, 
Because for them there is neither home nor high- 
way, 
Over that other prison, where the dead lie, 
But wake not at all, nor struggle, nor beat at their 

bars! 
Ever, ever cLanging! 



O voiceful restlessness! 

Vibrant soul of the world's coming and going, 

Resonant want of it, restive vent of it, and of desire, 

desire — 
Desire to wander back to the peace of the known, 
Or out and away to the anywhere of deliverance— 



54 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 

How many, a-dream, are caught in the net of your 

ringing! 
How many turn in their sleep and are caught away 

to the sea's roaring, 
Are caught away . . . over corn tossing, and 

woods waving, and rivers, 
Past the red-lit or the green-lit stations, clanging, 
Away to the dark of the East or the dark of the West! 
How many remember, far from mother or wife, 
And wonder if there is waking, if there is waiting, 
If there are tears falling for them in the darkness! 
How many, under your quaver, under your clamor 

and evocation, 
See sudden again the far-a-ways of childhood, 
Brought forth from the shadowy bournes of years 

and grief and blind forgetting, 
To merge again in the mists of sleep's immuning! 
How many, under your riot, under your plangence, 

under your passion, 
Ride again over cattle-wilds, again over buttes 

and mesas, 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 55 

Unlassoed still by Life, lords of its spaces, of its 

pastures! 
How many, mated with sin, disease and stagnance, 
In dens, moonless and loveless, where the free sweet 

winds would sicken, 
Feel, as they hear, the nails of their souls' coffin, 
Driven, driven, driven, driven in! 



in 



It passes, as all passes; there is silence. 

The huddled roofs dream again in the shadows, 

With the blue electric lights lonesomely burning, the 

streets unbroken, 
Night's immemorial opiate rules all. 
And the stars come closer, beaten off no more by the 

sound's urgence, 
Intimate now, and ready with revelations, with 

Teachings, 
For the sky has become the confessional of God, 



S 6 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 

And, Priest of the Universe, He hears its need — and 

shrives it — 
Till all the crying that was, now is comfort, 
All want that was is peace . . . all clanging rest! 



CHURCH BELLS HEARD IN THE COUNTRY 

Soft to my ear 
The Sunday bells 
Come on the wind 
Like whilom spells 
That long have lost 
Their pristine charm 
To do my spirit help or harm. 

And yet they haunt me 
With a thought 
Of years when faith 
Came all unsought; 
When youth was truth — 
And nothing more 
Did I demand, God to adore. 
57 



A 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 

No marvel more. 
For what had I 
To do with doubt, 
Having the sky. 
Or why once pause 
To ask or think, 
ving the whole wide world to drink: 



The world within 
Whose cup was love — 
A quaff of which 
All things could prove; 
Or make all questions 
Of no worth, 
Letting them never come to birth. 

Yes, in the sound, 
Then, of the bells 
Xo world-wide woes 
I heard, or knells. 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
Infinitudes 
Of grief and wrong 
Were yet dissolved within their song. 



For Spring and love 
And a girl's face 
Can give God being 
Thro all space. 
Spring, love, and joy 
In a lad's soul 
Can make all rifts in heaven whole. 



And yet the years 
That broke the spell 
Of Deity 
Within a bell, 
And made me ask, 
Thro storms of thought, 
Whether the world is God-en wrought; 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
That made me probe 
Sin and despair 
To see if faith 
Can find Him there; 
Are years yet nobler, 
For, truth now 
Is more than youth — is Life, somehow. 



SONGS TO A. H. R. 



SHELTER 



I have been out where the winds are, 

And tossing tops of trees, 
And clouds that sweep from rim to rim 
Of blue infinities. 
And all was a sound and sway there, a surging of 

unrest: 
So now I am wanting silence, and the heart I love 
best. 

Yes, and a quiet book, too, 

Of pensive poetry, 
In which to let the lines lapse 
Away, unlessonedly. 
For I shall gather, somehow, from the soft fire's glow, 
And from the eyes I love best, all I need to know. 
61 



62 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 

And hours shall slip to embers, 

And on the hearth lie; 
And ever}- wind that blew me, 
And every want, die. 
Then I shall take the hand I love best, and turn to 

sleep. 
And, if God wills, at dawn wake, again, to laugh or 
weep. 



DOMINIONS 

Death is as strong as the sea is, 

But when I lift my eyes 
To yours I know there is born there 

A light to outlive the skies. 
Death is as wide as the sea is, 

Yet at your least love-call 
I know that death's vastity is 
Not all. 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 63 

Death is as dark as the tide is, 

But when I see you move 
I know that the highmost star there 

Is guided in its groove. 
Death is as dread as the tide is, 

But while your heart is in mine 
I'll trust that all else beside is 
Divine. 



ni 



ASSUAGEMENT 

How close to-night the whippoorwill 

Calls, as the stars come out; 
And then how like a far echo — shrill 

No more, but a dream-shout. 
How softly there does the Infinite 

Lift up the silver moon, 
And then how silently He sets 

Our care-sick hearts in tune. 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
How soothingly does the night-wind sigh, 

And ease the earth to sleep. 
How fugitive is the cricket's cry, 

But, oh, with life how deep. 
How vastly stretches the universe, 

How lone and how aloof, 
Until our hands touch — then it seems 

But love's star-builded roof. 



IV 



SECRESIES 

What is between my heart and the moon 

To you alone I tell, 
In words soft as the trembling tone 

That comes from the far buoy-bell. 
What is between my heart and the sea 

Can ne'er be told, or writ, 
Because, like this my love for you, 

Its strength seems infinite. 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 65 

What is between my heart and the stars 

You need but ask to learn, 
For all my clustered thoughts of you 

Like them with beauty burn. 
What is between my heart and the deeps 

Of death could be confessed 
Only when I have clasped you there 

Again unto my breast. 



ON THE BEACH 

The long coast curves and the cliffs rise up, 

Red and white and green, 
The surf slips in with a sucking din 

Of shingle-wash between. 
The light gulls float with their crimson bills 

Set seaward — not one cries : 
And we are alone, alone with them, 

Under the aimless skies. 



66 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 

The tide slips in, of the moon released, 

Its rhythm gives us rest, 
And in its pause there are hid sweet awes 

That sink into the breast 
With silent soothing — till the coast 

Is lost in mystic gloam, 
And till deep in my dreams I hear 

Your voice that calls me home. 



VI 



AT THE EBB-HOUR 

As I hear, thro the midnight sighing, 
The low ebb-tide withdrawn, 

And gulls on the dark cliff crying 
For far discernless dawn, 

It seems that all life is lying 
Within your every breath, 

Yet I can not believe in dying, 
Or death. 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 67 

As I hear, from the gray church tower, 

The bell's unfailing sound 
Peal forth hour after hour 

To night's lone reaches round, 
It seems as if Time's wan power 
Would sear all things apace — 
All, save in my heart one flower, 
Your face. 



vn 



THE EDGE OF THE HILL 

If we walked over the edge of the hill 

And on, should we reach the moon? 
Silver it lies in the twilit skies 

Just over the trees that croon 
With the trembling breeze and the softened pleas 

Of the whippoorwill's lone cry. 
If we walked over the edge of the hill 
And reached the moon, would the wefts of ill 

Fade there, from love, and die? 



! EARTH AND NEW EARTH 

If we walked over the edge of the hill 

And on, should we reach the stars? 
And God at the end, our final friend 

In all time's troublous wars? 
And then, at last, with the world far past, 

Should we be satisfied? 
Or long again for the edge of the hill 
And love, so frailly human still, 

And hopes that ne'er abide? 

vin 



All of Spring in a bird's song, 
Of Summer in a rose, 

Of Autumn in one fallen leaf: 
So the world goes. 

So forever it goes, dear, 
And so within one breast 

I find my all of earth-joy, 
And ease for unrest. 



KING SOLOMON SINGS OF WOMEN 

I have been lord and spouse to many women, 
And sipped the honey of their lips and hair, 
And found that in the end distaste was there, 

Whether their beauty was of Jah or Rimmon. 

Queens have I taken out of Set or Sheba, 
And little handmaids with awestricken breath, 
And breasted priestesses of Ashtoreth 

Prouder than daughters of the kings of Reba. 

And with them I have walked amid the vineyards, 
And plucked the grape and poured the purple wine, 
And listened as they swore their hearts were mine; 

And knew their hearts were wanton weedy sin-yards. 
69 



?o EARTH AND NEW EARTH 

Or I have dallied with them in the palace, 

To plash of fountains in the pallid night. 

Framed have I ever found them for delight, 
But the souls of them dark as lairs of malice. 



A thousand have I led in fair betrothal, 

Berobed and ankleted and lapped in myrrh. 
Yet not unsoothly have the priests of Hur 

Assailed mv house as but a bridal brothel. 



For love is the anointing oil of passion, 
And no king can a thousand times be crowned. 
So in false oils have I too oft been drowned; 

Or, loving not, have sinned, too, in my fashion. 

Better it were that I had found one maiden 
Clothed in a thousand veils of chastity 
Than maids a thousand that all eyes could see 

Were ready with my king's lust to be laden. 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
Better it were that I had sought for beauty 

Wedded to wisdom in one breast and face. 

For man, with such, can find a dwelling-place: 
'Twixt many all his soul is tossed as booty. 



For there is cavil ever at his curtain 
And flesh-temptation ever in his sight. 
By harlotry his strength is shorn each night. 

Of but remorseful morrows is he certain. 



Better it were some Ruth had crept all fearless 
Into the threshing-floor of this, my heart- — 
Where chaff and grain seem never kept apart. 

Had it been so, my pillow now were tearless. 

And such an one, among the luring many, 
I can remember, tall and straight and calm, 
As rich in promised fruitage as the palm, 

One to compare in wisdom- ways with any. 



72 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 

But to my chamber never with enticing 

Came she — and should I call her, I, the King? 

On such a wisp of vanity we swing 
Away all that is sure for life's sufficing. 

Now she is gone: nor know I how or whither. 

But oft till day breaks and the shadows flee 

I long to have her gaze again at me, 
Like the young roe upon the mounts of Bether. 

And thro the harem aimlessly I wander, 

With loathing sense and soul no beauties please. 

Better a hive of stinging sterile bees, 
Or a housetop on which alone to ponder. 

For e'er the childless and the childed clamour 
Each after gifts, up to the kingdom's crown. 
And Pharaoh's daughter hears — wherefore the 
frown 

Of Egypt from her brow must I enamour. 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 73 

Sick am I of their glances and embraces, 

Sad am I of their bickerings and strife. 

A thousand wives have I — and yet no wife, 
A thousand hills, yet no heart-sheltered places. 



Wherefore I say, Women are as pomegranates, 
Tempting our taste that we may spread their seed 
Over the earth: as at creation's need 

God scattered o'er the sky His teeming planets. 

Or that as aloes are they, fair and fragrant 
At first, but ah, how bitter at the end. 
Adam would be in Eden, and God's friend, 

Had Eve not, at the Serpent's touch, turned vagrant. 



There is a spreading tree that men call elah. 
Would I could he beneath it with that one 
Whose heart would be as moon after the sun. 

Instead comes night— and Pharaoh's daughter. Selah. 



THE IMMORTAL 

Spring has come up from the South again, 

With soft mists in her hair, 
And a warm wind in her mouth again, 

And budding everywhere. 
Spring has come up from the South again, 

And her skies are azure fire, 
And around her is the awakening 

Of all the world's desire. 

Spring has come up from the South again, 

And dreams are in her eyes, 
And music is in her mouth again 

Of love, the never-wise. 
Spring has come up from the South again, 

And bird and flower and bee 
Know that she is their life and joy — 

And immortality! 

74 



VITA MIRABILIS 

I watched a little pulse beat in my wrist, 
A slender throb almost invisible, 
And said : This thin small tide is richly full 
Of all the world, and while it so keeps tryst 
I shall not want for earth and sea and stars, 
For the wide wonders of the infinite; 
I can look thro a glass at atom-wars, 
Or to far worlds in the faint ether lit. 
I can list woodland litany of brooks, 
See Spring bring up the flowers magicly 
And fill them, in the long sun-scented hours, 
With all the honeyed business of the bee. 
I can see on the hot horizon's rim 
Clouds built by genii of the coming storm 
From whose high bright sierras, far and dim, 
Fall the swift floods for summer's help or harm. 
And, out with Autumn and the flying leaves, 
75 



76 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 

Or with gray winds of winter icy-tressed, 
I can behold how earth when weary weaves 
The raiment of her sleep and lies to rest. 

Yes, while this little tide shall ebb and flow, 

From heart of me to heart of me again, 

I can hear all the wild seas tell their woe 

To all the wilder swaying souls of men. 

Waves that have wintered in gray polar zones, 

Or waves that lap palm-f ronded tropic isles, 

Where lotos beauty soon, how soon, atones 

For all the dearth of hope's sad-stricken smiles, 

I can descry; and oh, what marvels more, 

Of mountains in their snowy mitres rising, 

Of cities in niist-surplices set o'er 

Pale sacred banks of rivers — or surprising 

The sky with their high-stabbing strength and pride. 

And deserts I can gaze on, stretching wide 

With prescience of earth's universal death — 

Deserts whereon no living thing draws breath — 

Dun deserts; and how many things besidej 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 77 

How many, ah! while beating, beating, beating, 
Along my wrist this little stream is sent. 
How many things swift-taken from the fleeting 
Of day and night, and in its red vein pent. 
The restive generations of the world 
That rise and pass, the tragedies of nations, 
To-day at peace, to-morrow blindly hurled 
Into war-hurricanes and conflagrations; 
The bravery of millions deathward bound, 
The sorrowing of millions who survive; 
The music of humanity near drowned, 
Yet by faith's ceaseless fingers kept alive: 
These, and how many more, of fear or love, 
Amid life's fury or afar from it! 
How many that must wound great God above, 
Ere they are flung into oblivion's pit. 
These can be mine, to thrill me or to grieve 
Until a day when in my wasted wrist 
This little tide shall fail to keep its tryst, 
And, ebbing, but the worm and mystery leave. 



AS THE TIDE COMES IN 

The long-winged terns dart wild and dive, 

As the tide comes tumbling in. 
The calm rock-pools grow all alive, 

With the tide tumbling in. 
The crab that under the brown weed creeps, 
And the snail who lies in his house and sleeps, 
Awake and stir, as the plunging sweeps 

Of the tide come tumbling in. 



The driftwood swishes along the sand, 
As the tide comes tumbling in. 

With wreck and wrack from many a land, 
On the tide, tumbling in. 
78 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH , 79 

About my feet are a broken spar, 
A pale anemone's torn sea-star 
And scattered scum of the waves' old war, 
As the tide comes tumbling in. 

And, oh, there is a stir at the heart of me, 

As the tide comes tumbling in. 
All life once more is a part of me, 

As the tide tumbles in. 
New hopes awaken beneath despair 
And thoughts slip free of the sloth of care, 
While beauty and love are everywhere — 
As the tide comes tumbling in. 



THE INQUEST 

{As a Lover sees it) 

Up with her, do, out of her bed, 
Let her not rest, tho she is dead. 
Dig and pick at her, spade and shovel, 
Till you have reached her coffin-hovel: 
Then with prying and probe and test 
Hold your foul long-faced inquest. 



See if she died of a hole in her skull 
Or of a brain flushed overfull 
Of fetid days; till she was weary 
Of bearing breath grown mortal dreary. 
See if her murderer was Life — 
Or her own hand, sick of the strife. 
80 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 81 

Of her own hand, I say; or, fools! 
Mine, if it be your itch so rules. 
See if forsooth a blow did shatter 
Her world — where nothing more could matter — 
Or if it's meet to set the crime 
Down once more to the score of Time. 



See — see to it! strip her of rest, 
Even within the cold earth's breast. 
Then, at last, when query is sated, 
Sit for a smoke, an hour belated; 
For there is naught you need regret — 
You . . . with your live women, yet. 



POETIC EPIGRAMS 

(After the fashion of the Japanese) 
i 

THE FIRST RAIN 

The first rain on the grave 
Of him I loved . . . 
Soon the first grass will wave. 



The mists enfold the trees, 
Lest the new buds 

That came last night should freeze. 
82 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 83 

3 

SEED-BALLS 

From each pale sycamore 

Seed-balls are flung — 

To shade how many a door. 






IN A CEMETERY AT NIGHT 

Is it ghost-dreams that rise 
Up from each grave — 
Or only the fire-flies? 



The butterfly and flower 

Surely were made 

By earth in the same hour. 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 



THE LIGHTNING 

The lightning seems a tongue, 

Mad with the heat, 

The summer has outflung. 

7 

FAITH 

When in the wind they shake, 

The flower-bells, 

All hearts to worship wake. 

8 

THE AUTUMN MOON 

Long since the moon has found 

Nirvana's calm, 

In her desireless round. 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 

9 

DRIPPINGS 

The gutter drips and drips 

As thro my heart 

An age of sadness slips. 



THE MARBLE CHRIST 

That Christ upon a tomb, 

How lonely there 

He looks in the night-gloom. 



SCRIPT 



No word the wild geese cry, 

But only write 

In silence on the sky. 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 



AT NIGHT 

The wind seems like a prayer 
Of earth to God, 
Unanswered everywhere. 

NOVEMBER LEAVES 

In the least leaf of all 
Death takes, I hear 
The universes fall. 

14 

THE CROWS 

All day the prescient crows 
Have picked the fields . . 
And now how fast it snows ! 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 87 

15 
BY ONE JUST DEAD 

Tho but an hour has sped 

He is as dumb 

As one ten aeons dead. 

16 / 

THE FROST 

How flowerlike the frost! 

Can winter be 

Creative Summer's ghost? 

18 

LOST 

The wild duck finds her way 

Even at night: 

Yet I cannot by day. 



WINDS OF WAR 

(England, July and August, 19 14) 

1 

TO THE MASTERS OF EUROPE 

(When the first war-clouds arose) 

I 

To you, O rulers, who in this mad hour 

Still cling unto Alliance or Entente, 

And urged by ghastly "Honour" soon will daunt 
Innocent millions with death's awful power; 
To you, high masters, who will not betray 

Your oaths that are a crime against the world, 

Though now you see the flag of Hell unfurled 
In the wild hands of War, to you I say: 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 89 

Who gave you right to pledge your people's blood, 

Or pawn their souls to serve an Ally's sin? 

Or having pledged peace down to let rush in 
From land to stricken land red slaughter's flood? 

Who gave it, who? Your god of Self-Defence? 

A lie ! Pride is your lord, and Insolence ! 



You have built ships and armies with the bread 
That should have driven hunger from the land; 
You have mined seas and armed the mountains — 
grand 

In all; till lo, pausing to gaze ahead, 

And seeing there the equal legions ride 
Of foes who, too, are forward for defence, 
Fear seizes you, a sudden terror's sense 

Of dwelling calm such awful might beside. 

So in a panic moment "War!" you cry, 
And cataclysmic war almost is come ; 
There's heard the beating of destruction's drum— 



qo EARTH AND NEW EARTH 

Which you alone may stay, who sit on high. 
So rise and break the treaties you have sworn, 
Lest faithful you may bring all faith to scorn. 



Arise and break them, then count naught a crime 
Or cowardice but holding all dispute, 
Of peril to the millions whom you loot, 

From arbitration's fiat for all time. 

For no more by the bloody lips of War 
Is justice spoken; nor from starving lands 
Is true gain gotten by its ghoulish hands, 

Or manhood by its desolating mar. 

But training thus your dark death-dealing hate, 
Foe against foe, with awful enginry, 
Shall slay the angel of humanity, 

Whose wings at last were leaning to earth's gate. 
So rise, or you shall ever be accurst 
As of all godless murderers the worst. 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 91 



IN THE TOILS 

{London during the Crisis) 

1 

THE FUSE 

A Murder, an Ultimatum, 

A Question, a Reply: 
The murmur of rising Russia — 

Then peace struck down to die. 



For Slav and Frank and Teuton 
Are kindled; and the fuse 

Is laid to the heart of England: 
Can she to quench it choose? 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 



The great clock in Westminster 
Beats on or muffled chimes, 

As it has done in war or peace 
Before, unnumbered times. 

The moon, behind its tower, 
That rose ere England was, 

Knows not the bloody die is cast, 
But only Nature's laws. 

3 

MOBILIZATION 

All night there come the cries 
Acclaiming new recruits; 

All night the turgid tramp 
Of battle-shodden boots. 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 93 

And well, ah, well we know 

That ere the year shall pass 
Their restless lips and restless feet 

Shall rest — beneath the grass. 



in 



THE DEAD 



{On the Battlefields) 



Shovel them under the earth, 

The innumerable dead, 
And then on with the mirth 

Of singing, stinging lead. 

Shovel them under the earth, 
Their hearts that held the stars 

Shall wage now with the witless worm 
No unappeasable wars. 



94 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 



Shovel them under the earth: 
Aye, tho they might have borne 

If left to home and peace and toil 
Humanity's new morn. 

Shovel them under the earth, 
And with them the great wage 

Of vast achievement that is lost. 
Our children's heritage. 



For here were curious brains, 

Thro which accursed lead 
Struck wantonly — on dreams that held 

The future — left them dead. 

Or, furiously and blind, 

Against a forehead hurled 
Put out in silence what had been 

Great music for the world. 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 95 



Great music — now but dust. 

Oh, here is such a waste 
As not the hiving centuries 

May hope to see replaced. 

So shovel them under the earth, 

Within a sodden trench. 
Our children now shall have of them 

But this — a little stench. 



rv 

THE PRAYERS OF THE WARRING NATIONS 

. . . "neither shall there be war any more." 

Now, God in Heaven, you surely hear 

Your noble Christian nations? 
Two thousand years they have held you dear 

And poured you out libations. 



9 6 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 

Your shrines have run with ruddy Crusades 

And Inquisition-brine, 
But now there is poured for your delight 

A redder spilth of wine. 

That first small voice is Servia's, pushed 

To front by mother Russia, 
Who kneels — on a million peasants crushed- 

To keep your ear from Prussia: 
"Dear God ," it says, as a good Slav should, 

"/ made brave war last year: 
I slaughtered the Turk, a Christian work, 

So now I pray you hear; 

"My sister Austria sits on a throne 

That's bitten from my borders. 
A thief is she, a dog with a bone 

That's mine, by Xature's orders. 
I pray you then, by the Cross you love, 

Of Petrograd, not Rome, 
Join with us to rend her, root and stem, 

To raze her, heart and home 1 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 97 

"Join with us to rend her!" ... Ay God, grant 

A prayer so high of beauty! 
Yet not till Austria there shall pant 

One equal in Christ-duty. 
"I have been patient, Lord" it comes, 

With Servia's jealousy. 
Now let me lash her peoples till 

They learn thou lovesl me I 

"Now let me lash them!" . . . God of men! . . . 

Yet stay: there's Russia's murmur, 
"If Servia's lashed, Lord, why then 

My right must be the firmer. 
For A ustria prays with Teuton tongue, 

Whose purpose is to seize 
The little peoples whom Thou hast set 

To cushion my poor knees. 

"So, Lord, for the worshipping and praise 

That to you I have given, 
Beseech you tear the Teuton, craze 

His land, let it be riven I 



9 8 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 

Use for this glorious deed my horde 

Of Cossacks, from the wild, 
Till stands naught Prussian to the sun, 

No man to maid or child! " 

Aye Lord, "naught Prussian," for your fane 

Of earth will then ring rapture, 
As rivers of blood and tears and pain 

Your altars quickly capture. 
But what? the Teuton is near, to seize 

Your heart with Rhenish prayer? 
To flame in its stead another up 

Into your heaven's air? 

And France is loud, and England, too, 

Your holy aid beseeching? 
Unnumbered millions, all Christ-true, 

Their hands to heaven upreaching? 
And craving, each, that their enemies 

May fall by fire and sword, 
By famine and fate and pestilence 

And all hell's murder-horde? 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 99 

O God in Heaven, you surely hear 

Your noble righteous nations? 
Two thousand years they have held you dear, 

And now they pour libations 
Of blood, with the tears of wife and babe, 

And on your altars burn 
All civilization's frankincense: 

Lord, lean to each in turn. 



GOD OR CHAOS 

(Westminster Abbey, during the siege of Liege, August, 
1914) 

To-day all music 
And worship are vain, 
The vast holy beauty 
Around me, pain. 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
The high worn windows, 
The arches that rise, 
The great dead at rest here 
Draw tears to my eyes. 

For is it not useless, 
The race men run? 
The Hell-blood of battle 
And that of God's Son? 



Are poets and prophets 
Who die for high dreams 
Not dupes of a Being 
That soullessly streams? 



Or, unto its Purpose, 
If purpose there be, 
Are men as amoebae 
To that of the sea? 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
Swarm they thro the ages, 
Like vermin, to die? 
Have they no true reason 
For living soul-high? 

None? even to better 
Their kind, till a day 
When life for the living 
Shall seem good alway? 

When earth shall be heaven?- 
Alas, there is death, 
Whose certain impending 
Can poison all breath ! 

Whose silence and shadow — 
And opening tomb — 
Shall ever surround us 
With anguish and gloom! . 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
So, life, all-enduring — 
Not such as we know, 
But such as we dream of 
Must succour our woe! 



A life that grows upward 
And outward and on, 
That opens forever 
Upon a new dawn. 

That sees without ceasing 
Or blindness or break 
A vaster horizon 
Before it awake. 



For this were an anguish 
Surpassing appal, 
To strive thro the ages 
For No Soul at all: 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 103 

To suffer our years out, 
Then utterly die, 
Of use unto no one — 
Ourselves or the Sky. 



To No One ! but living 
And dying in pain, 
To find ourselves quickly 
Refashioned again. 



Refashioned forever: 
No hope in the grave! 
Oblivion nowhere 
To silence and save. 



Death useless as living !- 
O God, thou must bide, 
Or nought can avail us, 
Not world-suicide. 



ich EARTH AND NEW EARTH 

And if the earth rages. 
Immense in its crime. 
And bleeds as if blotting 
Thy Face from all time, 

Yet must we unshaken 
Remember Thou art, 
Not fear that blind chaos 
Is lord of life's heart. 



FATHER MERAN 

(During the Belgian war-famine) 

They come at night, the thoughts I hide, 
And pluck like ghouls at my dead faith, 
Crying that God, who lets war be, 
Is but a phantom, but a wraith. 
They come, as do uncounted faces 
Out of the cold and corpse-strewn places , 
Till I arise and by the pyx 
Lay off my peaceless crucifix. 

For in the church have I to sleep. 
Elsewhere too many starving lips 
Strain at me — strain, until it seems 
My soul will madden to eclipse. 
105 



io6 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 

But in the church the Virgin only 
Has her one Babe to nourish, lonely: 
And with the crucifix laid by 
I can escape their hunger-cry. 

Escape, unless, ere I he down 
A knock comes at the chantry door 
To bid me out and shrive the souls 
Of shattered men — a thousand more. 
Shrive, with a faith that's dead, the dying; 
To them of Christ and Heaven lying; 
Holding to each a tortured Cross 
Against his soul's eternal loss. 

that I could believe again! 

1 would go down to Hell for just 
A year of faith that earth and sky 

Are more than blood and death — and dust. 

In its abyss of fire and moaning 

Willingly would I lie atoning 
Even for those who struck Christ's Star 
From heaven with this Demon war. 



THE NEW PATRIOT 

Within his heart East shall be one 
With West, and his effaceless thought 

Shall be that earth was made for all 
Its driven millions sore-distraught. 

For he at last shall look and see 

Through all the creeds about him hurled, 
His nation is humanity, 

His country is the world. 



107 



THE SONG OF THE HOMESICK GAEL 
tfntht 

A: . -or GinWB g - MB] 

To see tfcf 
The winds of Kamasalg: 

upon. 

g >ea-spaces where 

'.' . . - . . 
Si . : .. „ . r - t ep it with unrest, 

::e hunger-cries that sound 

Ar.. ; . 
Si i :or the moaning hunger in my breast. 



EAKIB AND NEW EARTH Mf 

For grayness is the hue of all 

In life that is not lies. 
A thousand year I of tcm are in my heart, 
And only in their mystery 

Can I be truly wise: 
From light and laughter follies only start. 

I long to see the mists again 

Above the tumbling tide 
Of Ailsa, at the coming of the night 
There's weariness and emptiness 

And soul unsatisfied 
Forever in the places of delight. 



A DEVON RIDE 

I sped like the wind over Woodbury Common, 
The heath spread purple, the hills hung clear, 

The sky was a-swim with silver and salmon, 
The sea shouted up to me salty cheer. 

I sped like the wind, for joy was upon me, 
The glory of being, the sting of great earth, 

The throb that has ever divinely drawn me 
To think the whole world is a smile of mirth. 

I sped like the wind. How green was the bracken! 

The lift of it, drift of it, swing of it, sway! 
O sunnily glad could I feel God slacken 

His heart-strings, too, in a tide of play! 



A SIDMOUTH LAD 

Salcombe Hill and four hills more 
Lie to leftward of this shore. 
On the right Peak Hill arises 
Ever rises, sick'ning, o'er. 

Two score rotting years I've seen 
Sidmouth sit those hills between: 
Only Sidmouth — and twice over 
Must I bide it, as I've been. 

Then a churchyard hole for me, 
By the dull voice of the sea. 
Rotting, still in Sidmouth rotting, 
Rotting to eternity. 



WIDOWED 

One wild gull on a wilder storm, 
Winging to keep her lone heart warm. 
One wild gull by the surf — and I, 
Beaten by wind and rain and sky. 

One wild gull in the offing lost, 
Wilder heart in my bosom tost. 
One wild gull — O why but one! 
Two, dear God, should there be — or none! 



THE LARGER LOSS 

Far up to a moor above the sea 

I climbed — and took one thought with me. 

But gazing thence, over sea and moor, 
I flung thought off as a thing impure. 

For God loves moor and sea and wind, 

But thought is a shift of men who've sinned. 

And who no more with the sea and sky 
Can live, but they must question Why. 

Must ever question till the earth 
Has lost the wild joy of its worth. 

And that is loss all loss above — 
In Reason to forget to love. 
"3 



RE-RECKONING 

Two years have gone, and again I stand 

On the bow of a mighty ship 
That pushes her way 'twixt sea and stars 

With soft and dreamy dip. 
Two years of labouring, heart and hand, 

Of waging spirit-wars, 
Of wondering ever what life is — 

And if death heals its scars. 

Two years; and again the mast-bell sounds 

Above me — with a low voice, 
As ghostly as the white phosphor-foam 

That breaks with the old noise 
Of waters that have washed all bounds 

Of earth, that is man's home — 
His ark — on the wide ether flung, 

Unrestingly to roam. 
114 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 115 

For, even as we, is this our earth 

An endless wanderer 
Far down a universe with vast 

Strange voyagings astir; 
And where time ever brings to birth 

A craving, never past, 
To fare from where we are, to where 

No anchor e'er was cast. 

A craving — in the mote, the man, 

The mollusc and the star; 
A yearning on — life ! O lif e ! 

How far leads it, how far? 
All unbelievably began 

Thy voyage, mid a strange strife — 
That, meaningless, yet seems to mean 

It is with Wisdom rife. 

But if it is not, shall we say, 

"Let man scuttle his ship, 
And drown in universal death 

The griefs that at him grip? " 



n6 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 

No; for no surety rests therein 

To certain end of breath. 
He can but let hope set the course 

His soul foretokeneth. 



LAST LINES OF THE POET OF SUMA 

{Japan) 

A broken bell 

Under a rent thatch tower 

Beside a ruined temple 

Of Suma Mountain. 

To it each hour 

The mist comes like a priest 

But cannot sound it. 

Ever anear I dwell. 

For so my heart, 
Broken by age and sadness 
And twined about with ruin 
And death is hanging. 
117 



n8 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 

And if dim gladness 
Comes like a silent wraith 
And seeks to sound it, 
Only the tears start. 



ORIGINS 

Such beauty cannot be by chance, 
The mere chance of an atom-dance. 

The fair shape of yon soft sea-moon 
Was never by mere hazard hewn. 

That star which beams its lovely way 
Into my heart has more to say 

Than ever by Fortuity 

Was lent to moon or star or sea. 

So if moons bide, or pass away, 
If not a star in heaven shall stay, 

If like all things I, too, am spent, 
It will not be by accident. 



119 



THE BRIDE OF OITA 

(Japan) 

A single sampan sail: one sail, beating there, on the 
blind sea: means more than the eight million gods 
and Buddhas can to me! 

For it is bringing home my lord, out of the storm ! 
. . . To the gods I kneel . . . Namu . . . ! 
. . . But love, and love alone, my heart can 
warm! 

A single sampan sail! . . . Will it soon fold to 
rest its weary wing? . . . How wide then, ah, 
how wide, my shoji door will swing! 



THE IMMANENT GOD 

(As a Sceptic sees Him) 

See your God in the jelly-fish, 

Sucking salty food. 

See Him drift in the gulf-weed, 

In shark-bellies brood. 

See Him feed with the gull there, 

In a gray ship's wake. 

Feel Him afresh 

In your own hot flesh 

When into lust you break. 

Hear His wrath in the hurricane, 
Hushing a hundred lives. 
Hist His heave in the earthquake, 
In volcano hives. 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
Hark His stride in the plague- wind, 
Over a sterile shore. 
Down in a mine, 
Behold what wine 
Of coal-damp He will pour. 

Aye, and there in the ribaldry 

Of a night-wench's song 

Hear Him — or on a child's lips 

Cursing a slum-mate's wrong. 

Stark He starves in the street there, 

Or, full-fed, will go: 

He, your God, 

In every clod 

Or clot of human woe. 

And — in every infamy 
Loathed by you with shame. 
Clear of the saddest soul-stench 
None can keep His name. 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 123 

Man's, you may say, all crime is, 
But Who gave man birth? 
Spawn of the years 
Is he — with tears 
And strife to give him worth. 

Spawn of the Universes, 
God's great flesh and bone. 
Stars are the cells that float there, 
Thro lymph-ether strown. 
Dying, living, and dead there, 
Coming again to birth 
Out of a Womb 
That was their Tomb 
Are they — and is out earth. 

Such is your Immanent God — yea, 
Evil as well as good, 
Vileness even as beauty 
Holds His strange Godhood. 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
Great He seems in the sea's surge, 
Fair in a woman's face, 
Yet with the worm 
He feeds a term 
On every goodly grace. 

Spirit, then, you may hold Him, 

High of plan and hope. 

But world-flesh does He strive with, 

Yearn like us — and grope; 

So must ever and oft seem 

Avid to escape 

From the hid yeast 

That moulds the least 

Of all things to His shape. 

Spirit, may be — or haply 
We had known no growth, 
But in a slime primeval 
Still would dwell in sloth. 



EARTH AND NEW; EARTH 125 

Yet if such is His Being, 
Finite is His need. 
To the same ends 
As earth He wends 
And journeying must bleed. 



OCEAN OF NIGHT 

Wash me again, ocean of night, 

Clean of the cares of day. 
For I am soiled, in heart and sight, 

By the fume and fret and fray 
Of the griefs of men and the wrongs of men 

And the sins of men who stray. 
Bathe me, night, and lift and lave me — 

Let no assoiling stay. 

Wash me again, cleanser of care, 

Then let the winds of sleep 
Over me blow, with opiate air, 

And all my spirit steep. 
From the heart of earth and the heart of space 

And the heart of God let sweep 
Healing, night — a strong tide, stealing 

Into my soul's last deep. 
126 



HONGKONG CITY AT NIGHT 

Across the harbour, shining gray, you gleam, a 
myriad lights, 
As if fond heaven had emptied all its stars, 
To fill your lap, and on your brow and mountain 
breast the spray 
To spread, O city of enchanted nights! 

Dim ships at anchor round you, too, have caught the 
sliimmering shower, 
And cast long meteor gleams across the tide — 
Where dark-winged junks, that flit about, like 
strange sea-bats, but strew 
Your beauty with a more mysterious power. 
127 



128 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 

I sail away; and wanly do you vanish from my eyes, 

But in the magic voids of memory 
You are enchantress still, a starry city from the skies, 

Upon the phosphor fringes of the sea. 



A WIFE 

In holy wedlock — maid and man — 
We stood; then yearningly I ran 
Into his arms — and hell began. 

He kissed me for a week, caresst 

My body, throat and brow and breast: 

Then of his weariness confest. 

And turned to others who had been 
Old partners of his passion's sin — 
Or whom it were mere boast to win. 

For women are to him but flesh 
To serve and satisfy afresh 
The lusts that thro him throb and thresh. 
129 



130 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 

And I am but one of them — who 
Am bound to him a whole life thro: 
One whom he scarce has need to woo. 

For well he knows that till I die 

I must be at his bidding by. . . . 

What wanton is so low as I? 



BEACONS 

Like a spirit spark from the heart of God 
The coast-light flashes over the sea, 

Then leaves it wandering, wild and dark — 
As if light never more could be. 

And so it is with the spark of faith 
In every sad and wandering heart. 

It goes — as if forever: then 
All deathless up again will start. 



131 



THE LIVING BUDDHA 

(Peking) 

I saw the living Buddha come, 
Not to the beat of gong or drum, 
Not to the breath of hymn or hum 

Of prayers, 
But in a yellow Mongol cart, 
Drawn by the oxen set apart 
For such perfection, thro long art 

And cares. 

Around him yellow lamas sat, 
Ivory lean or sleek and fat, 
Each on a silken broidered mat, 
Unheeding. 

132 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 133 

And he amid them rode as calm 
As if it were Nirvana, from 
Whose peace he heard a mystic "Om" 
Proceeding. 

"What," said I, "this is Buddhahood? 

All the world's evil and its good 

This thick-lipped youth has understood — 

None better? 
Knows he the only way that peace 
May come to us, and full release 
From all Desire's futilities 

That fetter? 

"Yea, and that Time is but a Stream 
Got of Illusion's lustful dream? 
That worth and glory do but seem, 

To sages? 
O can it be that throngs — a third 
Of earth's all hold that fatal word? 
Have by it to retreat been stirred 

Forages?" 



i 3 4 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 

The thought struck sudden thro my heart- 
As an assuageless pity-dart. 
I closed my eyes to crowd and cart 

And pondered 
How long such nations must have lain 
Numb with despair and heavy pain 
Ere to this creed, with life-trust slain, 

They wandered. 



FROM A NORTHERN BEACH 

Is it because for a million years 

The tide has entered here 

From cold north seas 

Where ice-floes freeze 

That ever unto my ear 

Primordial loneness in its voice 

Comes telling of that time 
When life was not, upon the earth, 
But only glacier-rime? 

Is it because these granite rocks 
I share with weed and scurf 
Were held so long 
By the ice-throng 
135 



136 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 

That now they take the surf 

So selflessly and soullessly 
As if God's Immanence 

Had been pressed from them, never more 
To enter, with sweet sense? 

And is it because I, too, evolved 
From ice and sea and shore, 
Can understand 
How life has spanned 
The lifeless ages o'er, 
That as I sit here, suddenly 

The tide again seems stilled 
And earth beneath a great white pall 
Again lies changed and chilled? 

So it must be — ah, so; for soft 
Within my muted brain 

The heritage 

Of age on age 
Reverberates again. 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 137 

Wherefore when glacial Silence comes 

With Death I shall emerge 
From that as from the frozen Past, 

Under Life's endless urge. 



TREES AND GRASS 

Whoever will may have the flowers, 

Mine are the trees and grass! 
Scent there may be in the blossom-bowers, 

But, oh, when the breezes pass 
Thro purling leafy tops of the trees 

That ripple against the sky, 
Their murmuring makes it good to live, 
To take whatever life has to give; 

And good, at last, to die. 

Whoever will may have the flowers — 

Lily or wilding rose. 
Common the grass may seem in hours 

Enspelled by love of those. 
138 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 139 

But, oh, the flowers are little of earth, 

The green grass covers it all — 
A couch to be for my head to-day, 
And, when to-morrow I'm gone away, 

A cool clean winding-pall. 

Whoever will may have the flowers, 

Mine are the trees and grass. 
Beautiful care on the one earth dowers, 

But, oh, what peace can pass 
Thro the blood and breath and heart and mind— 

And into the soul of me, 
When I lie down with the grass and trees, 
And know God never needs strive for these, 

But merely lets them be! 



ZEBI 

She asked — and I gave her — a "lira." 
The name that she bore was Zebi. 

Her eyes, of a Raphael's era, 
Found bliss in a fondled baby. 

She said she had worn the city 
In search of her lover, Gian! 

Stabbing my heart with pity, 
So little she was and wan. 

He had gone, she said, "And, Signore, 

Baby was yet to come!" 
The immemorial story — 

Of woman's fate the sum! 
140 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 141 

Pitiless there he had left her 

To struggle, or starve, for bread. 
But she loved him, tho he bereft her — 

And should, till he was dead. 



"And he went with a signorina? "— 
"At the merest wave of a glove! 

They called her ' la Scarlattina,' 
She burned men so with love." 



"And why," I muttered to Heaven, 
"Does God make such as he! 

Slaves unto lust, and the leaven 
Of lust, their cruelty!" 

At which with a wise vainglory 
She said, this sad little ZSbi, 

"I think I can tell, signore: 
God made him to give me baby!" 



DURING A LONG CALM 

Great God, is this the tameless sea, that oft 
Has plunged with foamy hoofs along the shore 
And stamped the streaming sands with such a roar 

As made the startled cliffs stand stark aloft? 

Is this the reinless sea, that when it will 

Can paw all things that ride it down to death, 

And breathe into the air a blinding chill 
Of fog in which they sense destruction's breath? 

Why, like a calmly pasturing thing it creeps 
With softly lapping tongue along the beach, 
And soundless to its farthest shining reach 

It lies, in sunny idleness, and sleeps. 
142 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
Is this — is this the sea, so sleekly bared, 

So passionless, so pallid, and so null? 
Then never has my heart that I have dared 

To liken to it lain in sloth so dull. 



EVENING WATERS 

Evening waters softly gleaming 

Where the far sun is gone to rest, 
Gray and gold around me streaming, 

Like a tidal palimpsest 
On which God is ever writing 

Thro the night and thro the day 
Mysteries no heart can fathom — 

Words that fade in wind away; 

Evening waters, softly flowing, 

In a little while the stars 
Will He bosom, faintly glowing, 

In your deeps, like avatars 
Of His thoughts that first were scattered 

Fulgent thro infinity — 
Whose profundity eternal 

Somehow tells us it is He. 
144 



IN A PARK PAVILION 

Yesterday, where I am sitting, 

A young girl sat and said, 
"Naught am I to the living, 

I will go to the dead." 
Wind and bird around were flitting, 

April thro the air 
Flung the buds a million kisses — 
From the sky's blue sweet abysses: 
But she, numb to all its blisses, 

Blew her brains out there. 

All the world's wide-springing beauty, 

All the wood's glad dew, 
Hung about her heavy 

With despair's sick hue. 
H5 



i 4 6 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 

Dregs, to her, but dregs, was duty; 

Past and future hung 
Like blind curtains that her craving 
Could not pierce, to any saving: 
Useless seemed it to be braving 

Breath so sorrow- wrung. 

So she pressed a fated finger — 

And the earth went out; 
Swept from her forever 

By a bullet's flout. 
For she cared not still to linger 

In its April song; 
But, thro clotted blood, her spirit 
Sent to God, and bade Him fear it — 
If He had not sought to hear it, 

And annul its wrong. 

There is much space in the heavens, 

Space to lose God in, 
If we hold as guilty 

The sinner, not the sin. 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
Every crime has many leavens 

Causing it to rise 
From the deeps of human passion- 
Where she felt the long years fashion 
Fate for her— she who now ashen 

And self -ended lies. 

Yet, 'tis certain that creation 

Has its Freedom, too, 
Welling up forever 

Thro life's fate, and thro; 
That despair and degradation, 

Unto such as she, 
Cannot disavow the springing 
Of new inner strength e'er bringing 
Aid to us, despite fate's wringing. 

Peace, and let her be. 



THE FISHING 

I baited my hook with a thought of God 

And cast it out on the tides of Space 
And said I will catch life's mystery, 

Where the great star-wonders race. 
It sank like a plummet, past the deeps 

Of Vega and vast Aldebaran; 
But ever the mystery I caught 

Was shaped as the heart of man. 

Then, "Lo," said I, "there is law in this!" 

And, baiting my hook with a thought of men, 
I cast it out on the infinite 

Of star-foamed space again, 
And soon there was strain at the hither end, 

A thrill of things beyond earth's clod, 
And swift there came to the heart of me 

The mystery of God. 
148 



ABEYANCE 

I heard the Autumn leaves drop thro the moonlight 

And sink upon the ground. 
I heard the wind flit by, a cricket cry, 

And then no sound. 
But even in the pale sheen of the distance 

Hung the year's death. 
Earth's heart at last had lost all sweet insistence 

On breath. 

I wondered at the wan ways of the planets, 

At moon and misty star, 
At the fair feet of Spring now wandering 

Somewhere afar; 
And vain was all belief that she, with tidal 

Remembrance rife, 
Could turn again, to bring earth, wintry-idle, 

New life. 

149 1 



OLD AGE AND AUTUMN 

Drifting leaves 

And searing sheaves 
In a world of silence and solitudes; 

A world grown weak 

And Autumn-meek, 
Thro the wide-garnered fields and woods; 
A world where the spider silent weaves 
A shroud for seeds that have fallen low. 

Drifting leaves 

And searing sheaves, 
And the caw of a crow. 

Drifting leaves 
And searing sheaves, 
And a heart forgetful overmuch; 
A heart grown old 
To wind and wold, 
15° 



EARTH AND NEW EARTH 151 

No longer thrilled with Nature's touch; 
A heart so weary that torpor weaves 
Its shroud — for so all things must go; 
Drifting leaves . . . 
And searing sheaves . . . 
And the caw of a crow. 



A LOVER, REJECTED 

Some day you will love: 

Then there will be no more for you 

Sun, moon, earth, star, 

Or any certain thing; 
But only one want, 
Like mine, without shore, for you — 

Infinite, vast and aching, 

Dread yet divine. 

Yes, you will love, 

And yearning then will shake, for you, 

Pride, hope, tranquillity, 

And all you counted dear. 
For this law stands — 
Its chain shall never break for you: 

Who laughs at love lightly 

Lives to love with pain. 
152 



A LITANY FOR LATTER-DAY MYSTICS 

Out of the Vastness that is God 

I summon the power to heal me. 
It comes, with peace ineffable 

And patience, to anneal me. 
Ajar I set my soul-doors 

Toward unbounded Life 
And let the infinitudes of it 

Flow thro me, vigour-rife. 



Out of the Vastness that is God 
I summon the power to still me. 

It comes from inner deeps, divine 
With destinies that thrill me. 
i53 



154 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 

It follows the hush of every wrong; 

And every vain unrest 
It banishes; and leaves a bliss 

Before all unpossest. 

Out of the Vastness that is God 

I summon the strength to keep me, 
And from all fleshly fears that fret 

With spirit-winds to sweep me. 
I summon the faith that puts to flight 

All impotence and ills, 
And that, thro the wide universe, 

Well-being's breath distills. 



GOD, TO MEN 

When I compass earth with winds, 

Or array its loins with cloud, 
When I draw its tides to the moon, 

Or cover it with night's shroud, 
When I tether it to the sun, 

And the sun to a million more, 
Do you think I have done as much as I do 

When I open a least soul-door? 



When I bid wild comets spring 
Thro uttermost space, at play, 

Or gather the nebulae up 
And fashion the Milky Way, 
i5S 



i 5 6 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 

When I call, from the Never-seen, 
Spring's mystery thro the sod, 
Do you think I rejoice as much as I do 
At your murmur, "It is God"? 



Nay! — So, when I win, at last, 

To an Immanence complete, 
And thro star-world or soul 

Can assert my least heart-beat, 
Do you think that a terror still 

Shall astringe your liberty? 
Not so; you shall share, thro the Universe, 

Full masterdom with Me. 



ULTIMATES 

If Autumn came to the universe 

And the worlds like dead leaves fell, 
If Time lay dumb in the boundless hearse 

Of Space — an ended spell; 
If this had chanced— as chance it may — 

We still should be a part 
Of all that dwells in the Abyss, 

Or dreams within God's heart. 

Of dust or dreams: till circling Life 

Again should re-create 
Sun, moon, and star with the old strife 

Of their accustomed fate. 
And, in a new birth, doubtless we, 

Once more a-quest, should cry 
For beauty all too rarely breathed, 

And love less prone to die. 
157 



ARMS 

Two weapons only has the universe 

Against un vanquished man: 
Fate, whose foreorderings none may rehearse, 

Fear, that attacks his heart whene'er it can. 

Two weapons has Godlike and dauntless man 

Against the universe: 
Laughter, that limits evil to a span, 

And dreams, the widest doom-will to submerse. 



The Collected 
Plays and Poems 

OF 

CALE YOUNG RICE 



The great quality of Cale Young Rice's 
work is that, amid all the distractions and 
changes of contemporary taste, it remains 
true to the central drift of great poetry. His 
interests are very wide . . . and his books 
open up a most varied world of emotion and 
romance. — Gilbert Murray. 

These volumes are an anthology wrought 
by a master hand and endowed with perennial 
vitality. . . . This writer is the most 
distinguished master of lyric utterance in the 
new world . . . and he has contributed 
much to the scanty stock of American literary 
fame. Fashions in poetry come and go, and 
minor lights twinkle fitfully as they pass in 
tumultuous review. But these volumes are 
of the things that are eternal in poetic expres- 
sion. . . . They embody the hopes and 
impulses of universal humanity. — The Phila- 
delphia North- American. 

Mr. Rice has been hailed by too many 
critics as the poet of his country, if not of his 



generation, not to create a demand for a full 
edition of his works. — The Hartford {Conn.) 
Courant. 

This gathering of his forces stamps Mr. Rice 
as one of the world's true poets, remarkable 
alike for strength, versatility and beauty of 
expression. — The Chicago Herald {Ethel M. 
Colton). 

Any one familiar with "Cloister Lays," 
"The Mystic," etc., does not need to be told 
that they rank with the very best poetry. 
And Mr. Rice's dramas are not equaled by 
any other American author's. . . . The 
admirable characteristic of his work is the 
understanding of life. . . . And when 
those who are loyal to poetic traditions cher- 
ished through the whole history of our language 
contemplate the anemia and artificiality of 
contemporaries, they can but assert that Mr. 
Rice has the grasp and sweep, the rhythm, 
imagery and pulsating sympathy, which in 
wondering admiration are ascribed to genius. 
— The Los Angeles Times. 

Mr. Rice's poetic dramas have won him 
highest praise. But the universality of his 
genius is nowhere more apparent than in his 
lyrics. Their charm is derived both from the 
strength and beauty of their thought and 
from the multitudinous felicities of their 
Utterance. For sheer grace and loveliness 



some of these lyrics are unsurpassed in modern 
poetry. — The N. E. Homestead {Springfield, 
Mass.). 

It is with no undue repetition that we 
speak of the very great range and very great 
variety of Mr. Rice's subject, inspiration, and 
mode of expression. . . . The passage of 
his spirit is truly from deep to deep. — Mar- 
garet S. Anderson {The Louisville Evening 
Post). 

In Mr. Rice we have a voice such as America 
has rarely known before. — The Rochester {N. 
Y.) Post Express. 

It is good to find such sincere and beautiful 
work as is in these two volumes. . . . Here 
is a writer with no wish to purchase fame at 
the price of eccentricity of either form or 
subject. He lives up to his theory that the 
path of American literature lies not in dis- 
tinctly local lines, but will become more and 
more cosmopolitan since America is built of 
all civilizations. — The Independent. 

Mr. Rice's style is that of the masters. 

. . . Yet it is one that is distinctively 
American. ... He will live with our 
great poets. — Louisville Herald {J. J. Cole). 

Mr. Rice is an American by birth, but he 
is not merely an American poet. Over exist- 



ence and the whole world his vision extends. 
He is a poet of human life and his range is 
uncircumscribed. — The Baltimore Evening 
News. 

Viewing Mr. Rice's plays as a whole, I 
should say that his prime virtue is fecundity 
or affluence, the power to conceive and com- 
bine events resourcefully, and an abundance 
of pointed phrases which recalls and half re- 
stores the great Elisabethans. His aptitude for 
structure is great. — The Nation (O. W. Fir- 
kins). 

Mr. Rice has fairly won his singing robes 
and has a right to be ranked with the first 
of living poets. One must read the volumes 
to get an idea of their cosmopolitan breadth 
and fresh abiding charm. . . . The dra- 
mas, taken as a whole, represent the most 
important work of the kind that has been 
done by any living writer; . . This work 
belongs to that great world where the mightiest 
spiritual and intellectual forces are forever 
contending; to that deeper life which calls 
for the rarest gifts of poetic expression. — The 
Book News Monthly {Albert S. Henry). 



2 Vol. $3.00 net 
Doubleday Page & Co. 



AT THE WORLD'S HEART 

By CALE YOUNG RICE 

Another collection of lyrics by an American 
poet and dramatist whose reputation is de- 
served. — The London Times. 

It is the best that is offered on this side the 
Atlantic . . . nearly always the vital, 
gleaming, burning thought is there, pulsating 
with keen human sympathy and in a dominant 
masterful key ... of convincing sin- 
cerity. — The Philadelphia North American. 

This new book of Cale Young Rice is a pil- 
grim scrip for the world wanderer. . . . 
His songs are touched with the passion and 
emotion of which poetry is made. . . . 
Those to A. H. R. are so perfectly spontaneous 
that art has no share in them, or their art is 
subtle and fine enough to make them seem 
wholly spontaneous. — The London Bookman. 

Every fresh publication lifts Cale Young 
Rice a little higher and "At The World's 
Heart " is an appreciable advance. From first 
to last the poems are universal in appeal, and 
all are distinguished by a fine balance of eager 
emotion and technical finish. — The Chicago 
Record-Herald. 

A poet whose sympathies are as broad as 
the earth and cling close to it, is Cale Young 



Rice. . . . He has long been recognized as 
a master of lyrical technique. . . . There 
is (in this volume) scarcely a superfluous line, 
as there is not a superfluous poem. — The 
Louisville Courier- Journal' 

Cale Young Rice is highly esteemed by 
readers wherever English is the native speech. 
— The Manchester {England) Guardian. 

This book justifies the more than trans- 
atlantic reputation of its author. — The Sheffield 
{England) Daily Telegraph. 

Mr. Rice is not merely the vision- seeing 
dreamer — though to be sure he can weave 
dreams of beauty and enchantment — but he 
is the observer of life. . . . Any little 
chance encounter . . . illumined by his 
fancy resolves itself into poignant unforget- 
table drama. . . . One renews acquaint- 
ance with the spiritual fervor and with a fine 
rich imagery — which is the gift of only the 
truly inspired poet. — The Springfield {Mass.) 
Homestead. 

Americans of to-day are proud of Cale 
Young Rice's poems, and lovers of poetry else- 
where must admire their free play of imagina- 
tion and their many felicities of lyrical form. — 
The Scotsman {Edinburgh). 

Critics on the other side of the Atlantic have 
always been lavish in their praises of Mr. 



Rice's work, both for its inherent charm and 
universality of thought. ..." Submarine 
Mountains" is a gem of purest ray, and almost 
all the other poems are equally good. — The 
San Francisco Chronicle. 

Mr. Rice has given us nothing more worth 
while than this splendid expression of his 
genius. — The Buffalo (N. Y.) Courier. 

"At The World's Heart" will ably sustain 
Mr. Rice's reputation. . . . It is a worthy 
successor of his former works. — The Boston 
Times. 

Mr. Rice has no metred praise for — sensual- 
ity, quackery, pretence. ... He seeks 
the ideas that are eternal and expresses them 
in faultless language. — The Argonaut (San 
Francisco). 

Mr. Rice's freedom and force remain un- 
abated. . . . Nothing is alien to him. 
. . . His verse ranges all lands. — The Hart- 
ford (Conn.) Courant. 

Mr. Rice's genius and temperament are 
cosmic and cosmopolitan. — The Rochester (A 7 . 
Y.) Post-Express. 

Cale Young Rice has indeed the sympathetic 
imagination and not infrequently a touch of 
the sublime — rare in poets of any tongue. 
Such poems as [several mentioned] cannot 



easily be matched in English poetry, old or new. 
— Vogue. 

Cale Young Rice has captivated the most 
severe critics of Great Britain as well as in his 
own land. . . . He is a poet of whom 
America may well be proud. — Portland (Ore.) 
Evening Telegram. 

Some poets can sing of their own land only; 
others have been content to immortalize a 
little corner of the wide earth; and a few have 
been able to wing their way from clime to 
clime and feel equally at home in the present 
or the past. In this last mentioned class Mr. 
Rice naturally finds a place. . . . We dis- 
cover in him a variety of theme and treatment 
such as few poets can offer. . . . His 
verse is as bracing as the sea of which he sings 
with such fervor and understanding. — The 
Book News Monthly (Albert S. Henry). 

Elsewhere Mr. Henry ranks Mr. Rice first 
of all living poetic dramatists. 



I 



PORZIA 

By 

CALE YOUNG RICE 

T PRESENTS a last phase of the Renais- 
sance with great effect." Sir Sydney Lee. 

" 'Porzia ' is a very romantic and beauti- 
ful thing. After a third reading I enjoy and 
admire it still more." Gilbert Murray. 

"There are certain lyrical qualities in the 
dramas of Cale Young Rice and certain dra- 
matic qualities in many of his finest lyrics 
that make it very difficult for the critic to 
resolve whether he is highest as singer or 
dramatist. ' Porzia ' is a poetic play in which 
these two gifts blend with subtle and powerful 
effectiveness. It is not written in stereotyped 
heroic verse, but in sensitive metrical lines 
that vary in beat and measure with the 
strength, the tenderness, the anguish, bitter- 
ness and passion of love or hate they have to 
express. The bizarre and poignant central 
incident on which the action of ' Porzia ' turns 
is such as would have appealed irresistibly 
to the imagination and dramatic instincts 
of the great Elizabethan dramatists, and Mr. 
Rice has developed it with a force and imagina- 
tive beauty that they alone could have 
equaled and with a restraint and delicacy of 
touch which makes pitiful and beautiful a 



story they would have clothed in horror. 
. . . He turns what might have been a 
tragic close to something that is loftier and 
more moving. ... It matters little that 
we hesitate between ranking Mr. Rice highest 
as dramatist or lyrist; what matters is that 
he has the faculty divine beyond any living 
poet of America; his inspiration is true, and 
his poetry is the real thing." The London 
Bookman. 

"'Porzia' has the swift human movement 
which Mr. Rice puts into his dramas, and 
technique of a very high order. . . . The 
dramatic form is the most difficult to sustain 
harmoniously and this Mr. Rice always 
achieves." The Baltimore News. 

"To the making of 'Porzia' Mr. Rice has 
summoned all the resources of his dramatic 
skill. On the constructive side it is particu- 
larly strong. . . . The opening scene is 
certainly one of the happiest Mr. Rice has 
written, while the climaxing third act is a 
brilliant piece of character study .... 
The play is rich in poetry; . . in it Mr. 
Rice has scored another success ... in 
a field where work of permanent value is 
rarely achieved." Albert S. Henry (The 
Book News Monthly). 

"Mr. Rice apes neither the high-flown style 
of the Elizabethans, nor the turgid and cryptic 



style of Browning . . . 'Porzia' should 
attract the praise of all who wish to see real 
literature written in this country again." 
The Covington (Ky.) Post. 

"The complete mastery of technique, the 
dignity and dramatic force of the characters, 
the beauty of the language and clear directness 
of the style together with the vivid imagina- 
tion needed to portray so strikingly the 
renaissance spirit and atmosphere, make the 
work one that should last." The Springfield 
(Mass.) Homestead. 

"It is not unjust to say that Cale Young 
Rice holds in America the position that 
Stephen Phillips holds in England." The 
Scotsman (Edinburgh). 

"Had no other poetic drama than this been 
written in America, there would be hope for 
the future of poetry on the stage." John G. 
Neihardt (The Minneapolis Journal). 

" ' Porzia ' is a very beautiful play. The 
spiritual uplift at the end thrilled me deeply." 
Minnie Maddern Fiske. 

Net, $1.25 (postage 12c.) 



FAR QUESTS 

CALE YOUNG RICE 

THE countrymen of Cale Young Rice 
apparently regard him as the equal of 
the great American poets .of the past. 
Far Quests is good unquestionably. It 
shows a wide range of thought, and sympathy, 
and real skill in workmanship, while occasion- 
ally it rises to heights of simplicity and truth, 
that suggest such inspiration as should mean 
lasting fame. — The Daily Telegraph {London). 

"Mr. Rice's lyrics are deeply impressive. 
A large number are complete and full-blooded 
works of art." — Prof. Wm. Lyon Phelps {Yale 

University). 

"Far Quests contains much beautiful work — 
the work of a real poet in imagination and 
achievement." — Prof. J. W. Mackail {Oxford 
University). 

"Mr. Rice is determined to get away from 
local or national limitations and be at what- 
ever cost universal. . . . These poems 
are always animated by a force and freshness 
of feeling rare in work of such high virtu- 
osity." — The Scotsman {Edinburgh). 

"Mr. Cale Young Rice is acknowledged by 
his countrymen to be one of their great poets. 



There is great charm in his nature songs (of 
this volume) and in his songs of the East. 
Mr. Rice writes with great simplicity and 
beauty." — The Sphere (London). 

Mr. Rice's forte is poetic drama. Yet in 
the act of saying this the critic is confronted 
by such poems as The Mystic . . . These 
are the poems of a thinker, a man of large 
horizons, an optimist profoundly impressed 
with the pathos of man's quest for happiness 
in all lands." — The Chicago Record-Herald. 

" Mr. Rice's latest volume shows no diminu- 
ition of poetic power. Fecundity is a mark 
of the genuine poet, and a glance through 
these pages will demonstrate how rich Mr. 
Rice is in vitality and variety of thought 

. . There is too, the unmistakable qual- 
ity of style. It is spontaneous, flexible, and 
strong with the strength of simplicity — a style 
of rare distinction. —Albert S. Henry, (The 
Book News Monthly, Philadelphia). 

Net. $1.25 (postage 12c.) 



THE IMMORTAL LURE 

CALE YOUNG RICE 

It is great art — with great vitality. 

James Lane Allen. 

In the midst of the Spring rush there arrives one 
book for which all else is pushed aside . . . We 
have been educated to the belief that a man must be 
long dead before he can be enrolled with the great 
ones. Let us forget this cruel teaching . . . This 
volume contains four poetic dramas all different in 
setting, and all so beautiful that we cannot choose 
one more perfect than another. . . . Too extra- 
vagant praise cannot be given Mr. Rice. 

The San Francisco Call. 

Four brief dramas, different from Paola & Francesca, 
but excelling it — or any other of Mr. Phillips's work, it 
is safe to say — in a vivid presentment of a supreme 
moment in the lives of the characters . . . They 
form excellent examples of the range of Mr. Rice's 
genius in this field. The New York Times Review- 
Mr. Rice is quite the most ambitious, and most 
distinguished of contemporary poetic dramatists in 
America. The Boston Transcript (W. S. Braithwaite.) 

The vigor and originality of Mr. Rice's work never 
outweigh that first qualification, beauty . . . No 
American writer has so enriched the body of our poetic 
literature in the past few years. 

The New Orleans Picayune. 

Mr. Rice is beyond doubt the most distinguished 
poetic dramatist America has yet produced. 

The Detroit Free Press. 

That in Cale Young Rice a new American poet 
of great power and originality has arisen cannot be 
denied. He has somehow discovered the secret 
of the mystery, wonder and spirituality of human 



existence, which has been all but lost in our commer- 
cial civilization. May he succeed in awakening our 
people from sordid dreams of gain. 

Rochester (N. Y. ) Post Express. 

No writer in England or America holds himself to 
higher ideals (than Mr. Rice) and everything he does 
bears the imprint of exquisite taste and the finest 
poetic instinct. The Portland Oregonian. 

In simplicity of art form and sheer mystery of 
romanticism these poetic dramas embody the new 
century artistry that is remaking current imaginative 
literature. The Philadelphia North American. 

Cale Young Rice is justly regarded as the leading 
master of the difficult form of poetic drama. 

Portland {Me.) Press. 

Mr. Rice has outlived the prophesy that he would 
one day rival Stephen Phillips in the poetic drama. 
As dexterous in the mechanism of his art, the young 
American is the Englishman's superior in that unforced 
quality which bespeaks true inspiration, and in a wider 
variety of manner and theme. 

San Francisco Chronicle. 

Mr. Rice's work has often been compared to Stephen 
Phillips's and there is great resemblance in their ex- 
pression of high vision. Mr. Rice's technique is sure 
. . . his knowledge of his settings impeccable, and 
one feels sincerely the passion, power and sensuous 
beauty of the whole. "Arduin"(one of the plays) 
is perfect tragedy; as rounded as a sphere, as terrible 
as death. Review of Reviews. 

The Immortal Lure is a very beautiful work. 

The Springfield (Mass.) Republican. 

The action in Mr. Rice's dramas is invariably 
compact and powerful, his writing remarkably forcible 
and clear, with a rare grasp of form. The plays are 
brief and classic. Baltimore News. 



These four dramas, each a separate unit perfect 
in itself and differing widely in treatment, are yet 
vitally related by reason of the one central theme, 
wrought out with rich imagery and with compelling 
dramatic power. The Louisville Times (U. S.) 

The literary and poetical merit of these dramas is 
undeniable, and they are charged with the emotional 
life and human interest that should, but do not, al- 
ways go along with those other high gifts. 

The (London) Bookman. 

Mr. Rice never [like Stephen Phillips] mistakes 
strenuous phrase for strong thought. He makes his 
blank verse his servant, and it has the stage merit of 
possessing the freedom of prose while retaining the 
impassioned movement of poetry. 

The Glasgow (Scotland) Herald. 

These firm and vivid pieces of work are truly wel- 
come as examples of poetic force that succeeds with- 
out the help of poetic license. 

The Literary World (London.) 

We do not possess a living American poet whose 
utterance is so clear, so felicitous, so free from the 
inane and meretricious folly of sugared lines. . . . 
No one has a better understanding of the development 
of dramatic action than Mr. Rice. 

The Book News Monthly (Albert S. Henry.) 

Net, $1.25 (postage 12c.) 



Cohntrtxhe (( 51 TheWohu>'sWohk 

IN AMERICA \g/ 

DOUBLED AY, PAGE & CO., GARDEN CITY. N. Y. 



MANY GODS 

By 

CALE YOUNG RICE 

THESE poems are flashingly, glowingly 
full of the East. . . . What I 
am sure of in Mr. Rice is that here 
we have an American poet whom we may 
claim as ours." The North American Review 
{William Dean Howells). 

"Mr. Rice has the gift of leadership. . 
and he is a force with whom we must reckon." 
The Boston Transcript. 

. . . "We find here a poet who strives 
to reach the goal which marks the best that 
can be done in poetry." The Book News 
Monthly (A. S. Henry). 

"When you hear the pessimists bewailing 
the good old time when real poets were abroad 
in the land ... do not fail to quote 
them almost anything by Cale Young Rice, 
a real poet writing to-day. ... He has 
done so much splendid work one can scarcely 
praise him too highly." The San Francisco 
Call. 

"'In Many Gods' the scenes are those of 
the East, and while it is not the East of 
Loti, Arnold or Hearn, it is still a place of 



brooding, majesty, mystery and subtle fasci- 
nation. There is a temptation to quote 
such verses for their melody, dignity of form, 
beauty of imagery and height of inspiration." 
The Chicago Journal. 

"'Love's Cynic' (a long poem in the vol- 
ume) might be by Browning at his best." 
Pittsburg Gazette-Times. 

"This is a serious, and from any standpoint, 
a successful piece of work ... in it 
are poems that will become classic." Passaic 
(New Jersey) News. 

"Mr. Rice must be hailed as one among 
living masters of his art, one to whom we may 
look for yet greater things." Presbyterian 
Advance. 

"This book is in many respects a remark- 
able work. The poems are indeed poems." 
The Nashville Banner. 

"Mr. Rice's poetical plays reach a high 
level of achievement. . . . But these 
poems show a higher vision and surer mastery 
of expression than ever before." The London 
Bookman. 

Net, $1.25 {postage 12c.) 



NIRVANA DAYS 

Poem* by 

CALE YOUNG RICE 

MR. RICE has the technical cunning 
that makes up almost the entire 
equipment of many poets nowadays, 
but human nature is more to him always 
. . . and he has the feeling and imagina- 
tive sympathy without which all poetry is 
but an empty and vain thing." The London 
Bookman. 

"Mr. Rice's note is a clarion call, and of his 
two poems, 'The Strong Man to His Sires' and 
'The Young to the Old,' the former will send 
a thrill to the heart of every man who has the 
instinct of race in his blood, while the latter 
should be printed above the desk of every 
minor poet and pessimist. . . . The son- 
nets of the sequence, 'Quest and Requital,' 
have the elements of great poetry in them." 
The Glasgow {Scotland) Herald. 

"Mr. Rice's poems are singularly free from 
affectation, and he seems to have written be- 
cause of the sincere need of expressing some- 
thing that had to take art form." The Sun 
(New York). 

"The ability to write verse that scans is 
quite common. . . . But the inspired 
thought behind the lines is a different 



thing; and it is this thought untrammeled 
— the clear vision searching into the deeps 
of human emotion — which gives the verse 
of Mr. Rice weight and potency. ... In 
the range of his metrical skill he easily stands 
with the best of living craftsmen . . . 
and we have in him ... a poet whose 
dramas and lyrics will endure." The Book 
News Monthly (A. S. Henry). 

"These poems are marked by a breadth 
of outlook, individuality and beauty of 
thought. The author reveals deep, sincere 
feeling on topics which do not readily lend 
themselves to artistic expression and which 
he makes eminently worth while." The 
Buffalo (N. Y.) Courier. 

"We get throughout the idea of a vast 
universe and of the soul merging itself in the 
infinite. . . . The great poem of the 
volume, however, is 'The Strong Man to His 
Sires.'" The Louisville Post {Margaret S. 
Anderson). 

"The poems possess much music . . . 
and even in the height of intensified feeling 
the clearness of Mr. Rice's ideas is not dimmed 
by the obscure haze that too often goes with 
the divine fire." The Boston Globe. 

Paper boards. Net, $1.25 (postage 12c.) 



A NIGHT IN AVIGNON 

By 

CALE YOUNG RICE 

Successfully produced by Donald Robertson 

IT IS as vivid as a page from Browning. 
Mr. Rice has the dramatic pulse." 
James Huneker. 

"It embraces in small compass all the 
essentials of the drama. New York Saturday 
Times Review {Jessie B. Rittenhouse) . 

"It presents one of the most striking 
situations in dramatic literature and its 
climax could not be improved." The San 
Francisco Call. 

"It has undeniable power, and is a very 
decided poetic achievement." The Boston 
Transcript. 

"It leaves an enduring impression of a 
soul tragedy. ' ' The Churchman. 

"Since the publication of his 'Charles di 
Tocca' and other dramas, Cale Young Rice 
has justly been regarded as a leading Ameri- 
can master of that difficult form, and many 
critics have ranked him above Stephen 
Phillips, at least on the dramatic side of his 
art. And this judgment is further confirmed 
by 'A Night in Avignon.' It is almost in- 
credible that in less than 500 lines Mr. Rice 
should have been able to create so perfect a 



play with so powerful a dramatic effect." The 
Chicago Record-Herald (Edwin S. Shuman) 

"There is poetic richness in this brilliant 
composition; a beauty of sentiment and 
grace in every line. It is impressive, metri- 
cally pleasing and dramatically powerful." 
The Philadelphia Record. 

"It offers one of the most striking situa- 
tions in dramatic literature." The Louisville 
Courier- Journal. 

"The publication of a poetic drama of the 
quality of Mr. Rice's is an important event 
in the present tendency of American litera- 
ture. He is a leader in this most significant 
movement, and 'A Night in Avignon' is 
marked, like his other plays, by dramatic 
directness, high poetic fervor, clarity of 
poetic diction, and felicity of phrasing." 
The Chicago Journal. 

"It is a dramatically told episode, and the 
metre is most effectively handled, making 
a welcome change for blank verse, and greatly 
enhancing the interest." Sydney Lee. 

"Many critics, on hearing Mr. Bryce's 
prediction that America will one day have a 
poet, would be tempted to remind him of 
Mr. Rice." The Hartford (Conn.) C our ant. 
Net 50c. (postage 5c.) 



I 



YOLANDA OF CYPRUS 

A Poetic Drama by 

CALE YOUNG RICE 

T HAS real life and drama, not merely- 
beautiful words, and so differs from the 
great mass of poetic plays. 

Prof. Gilbert Murray. 

Minnie Maddern Fisk says: "No one can 
doubt that it is superior poetically and 
dramatically to Stephen Phillips's work," 
and that Mr. Rice ranks with Mr. Phillips 
at his best has often been reaffirmed. 

"It is encouraging to the hope of a native 

drama to know that an American has written 

a play which is at the same time of decided 

poetic merit and of decided dramatic power. " 

The New York Times. 

"The most remarkable quality of the play 
is its sustained dramatic strength. Poetically 
it is frequently of great beauty. It is also 
lofty in conception, lucid and felicitous in 
style, and the dramatic pulse throbs in every 
line." The Chicago Record-Herald. 

"The characters are drawn with force and 
the play is dignified and powerful," and adds 
that if it does not succeed on the stage it 
will be "because of its excellence. " 

The Springfield Republican. 



"Mr. Rice is one of the few present-day 
poets who have the steadiness and weight for 
a well-sustained drama." 

The Louisville Post {Margaret Anderson). 

"It has equal command of imagination, 
dramatic utterance, picturesque effectiveness 
and metrical harmony. " 

The London (England) Bookman. 

T. P.'s Weekly says: "It might well stand 
the difficult test of production and will be 
welcomed by all who care for serious verse." 

The Glasgow (Scotland) Herald says: "Yo- 
landa of Cyprus is finely constructed; the 
irregular blank verse admirably adapted for 
the exigencies of intense emotion; the char- 
acters firmly drawn; and the climax serves 
the purpose of good stagecraft and poetic 
justice. " 

"It is well constructed and instinct with 
dramatic power." Sydney Lee. 

"It is as readable as a novel. " 

The Pittsburg Post. 

"Here and there an almost Shakespearean 
note is struck. In makeup, arrangement, 
and poetic intensity it ranks with Stephen 
Phillips's work. " The Book News Monthly. 
Net, $1.25 (postage 10c.) 

COtTNTBTtlW fW\ The-WoEID'S-WOEK fwf\ trnGAXOTK 
INAMEH1CA \£/ ^^/ MACAZIK* 

DOUBLEDAY. PAGE & CO., GARDEN CITY, N. Y. 



DAVID 

A Poetic Drama by 

CALE YOUNG RICE 

I WAS greatly impressed with it and de- 
rived a sense of personal encouragement 
from the evidence of so fine and lofty 
a product for the stage." Richard Mansfield. 

"It is a powerful piece of dramatic por- 
traiture in which Cale Young Rice has again 
demonstrated his insight and power. What 
he did before in 'Charles di Tocca' he has 
repeated and improved upon. . . . Not 
a few instances of his strength might be 
cited as of almost Shakespearean force. 
Indeed the strictly literary merit of the tragedy 
is altogether extraordinary. It is a con- 
tribution to the drama full of charm and 
power." The Chicago Tribune. 

"From the standpoint of poetry, dignity 
of conception, spiritual elevation and finish 
and beauty of line, Mr. Rice's 'David' is, 
perhaps, superior to his 'Yolanda of Cyprus,' 
but the two can scarcely be compared." 
The New York Times (Jessie B. Rittenhouse). 

"Never before has the theme received treat- 
ment in a manner so worthy of it." The 
St. Louis Globe-Democrat. 



"It needs but a word, for it has been passed 
upon and approved by critics all over the 
country." Book News Monthly. And again: 
"But few recent writers seem to have found 
the secret of dramatic blank verse; and of 
that small number, Mr. Rice is, if not first, 
at least without superior." 

"With instinctive dramatic and poetic 
power, Mr. Rice combines a knowledge of 
the exigencies of the stage." Harper's 
Weekly. 

"It is safe to say that were Mr. Rice an 
Englishman or a Frenchman, his reputation 
as his country's most distinguished poetic 
dramatist would have been assured by a 
more universal sign of recognition. The 
Baltimore News {writing of all Mr. Rice's 
plays) . 



Net, $1.25 {postage 12c.) 



CHARLES DI TOCCA 

By 

CALE YOUNG RICE 

I TAKE off my hat to Mr. Rice. His 
play is full of poetry, and the pitch and 
dignity of the whole are remarkable." 
James Lane Allen. 

"It is a dramatic poem one reads with a 
heightened sense of its fine quality through- 
out. It is sincere, strong, finished and noble, 
and sustains its distinction of manner to the 
end. . . . The character of Helena is 
not unworthy of any of the great masters of 
dramatic utterance." The Chicago Tribune. 

"The drama is one of the best of the kind 
ever written by an American author. Its 
whole tone is masterful, and it must be classed 
as one of the really literary works of the 
season." (1903). The Milwaukee Sentinel. 

"It shows a remarkable sense of dramatic 
construction as well as poetic power and 
strong characterization." James Mac Arthur, 
in Harper's Weekly. 

"This play has many elements of perfection. 
Its plot is developed with ease and with a large 
dramatic force; its characters are drawn with 
sympathy and decision; and its thoughts 



rise to a very real beauty. By reason of it 
the writer has gained an assured place among 
playwrights who seek to give literary as well 
as dramatic worth to their plays." The 
Richmond (Va.) News-Leader. 

"The action of the play is admirably com- 
pact and coherent, and it contains tragic 
situations which will afford pleasure not only 
to the student, but to the technical reader." 
The Nation. 

"It is the most powerful, vital, and truly 
tragical drama written by an American for 
some years. There is genuine pathos, mighty 
yet never repellent passion, great sincerity 
and penetration, and great elevation and 
beauty of language." The Chicago Post. 

"Mr. Rice ranks among America's choicest 
poets on account of his power to turn music 
into words, his virility, and of the fact that he 
has something of his own to say." The Boston 
Globe. 

"The whole play breathes forth the inde- 
finable spirit of the Italian renaissance. In 
poetic style and dramatic treatment it is 
a work of art." The Baltimore Sun. 

Paper boards. Net, $1.25 {postage, gc.) 



SONG-SURF 

(Being the Lyrics of Plays and Lyrics) by 

CALE YOUNG RICE 

MR. RICE'S work betrays wide sym- 
pathies with nature and life, and a 
welcome originality of sentiment and 
metrical harmony." Sydney Lee. 

"In his lyrics Mr. Rice's imagination works 
most successfully. He is an optimist — and 
in these days an optimist is irresistible — 
and he can touch delicately things too holy 
for a rough or violent pathos." The London 
Star {James Douglas). 

"Mr. Rice's highest gift is essentially 
lyrical. His lyrics have a charm and grace 
of melody distinctively their own." The 
London Bookman. 

"Mr. Rice is keenly responsive to the 
loveliness of the outside world, and he re- 
veals this beauty in words that sing them- 
selves." The Boston Transcript. 

"Mr. Rice's work is everywhere marked 
by true imaginative power and elevation of 
feeling." The Scotsman. 

"Mr. Rice's work would seem to rank with 
the best of our American poets of to-day." 
The Atlanta Constitution. 



"Mr. Rice's poems are touched with the 
magic of the muse. They have inspiration, 
grace and true lyric quality." The Book 
News Monthly. 

"Mr. Rice's poetry as a whole is both 
strongly and delicately spiritual. Many of 
these lyrics have the true romantic mystery 
and charm. ... To write thus is no 
indifferent matter. It indicates not only long 
work but long brooding on the beauty and 
mystery of life." The Louisville Post. 

" Mr. Rice is indisputably one of the greatest 
poets who have lived in America. . . . 
And some of these (earlier) poems are truly 
beautiful. The Times-Union (Albany, N. Y.) 



Net, $1.25 (postage 12c.) 






THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS 
GARDEN CITY, N. Y. 



